To say that our political classes do not understand the lives of the people they represent would be a massive understatement.
It is a situation that would perhaps not be quite as bad if the ‘experts’ politicians rely on to advise them and dream up the strategies they then implement, had an understanding of life that would make up for the lack of life experience of their own.
But they don’t.
If you had spoken to an economist just a year ago, they are likely to have told you that a situation could never exist where oil could not be sold. Yet that is exactly what has happened around the World in the past 48 hours.
Oil has long been known as black gold for good reason.
In its refined form it fuels and lubricates our cars, lorries, buses, trains and aeroplanes and is used in the manufacturing process for a seemingly endless number of different things.
Its sale, trading and transportation has become such a key part of the World economy at large, economists and industrialists watch both the price and the quantities being sold at any time very closely. Downward fluctuations in price are often a good indicator of the economy slowing down – simply because less production and use of oil means that demand for everything else has dropped.
Oil production has been used as an economic weapon for a long time. One of the most unsettling realities of the interest that the West has had in the Middle East and Arab States since the Second World War has been maintaining dominance of the control of the Worlds oil supply – as the taps being turned off would normally mean that everything else can be brought to a halt – or supply restricted to the point where the prices of everything go through the roof because of the key role that oil plays in the production of almost everything today.
Oil has always been about money. Those who own the oilfields or have monopoly over the supply have until now been guaranteed to be able to write what seems like an endless cheque.
Not any more.
Suddenly, the vulnerability of their bomb=proof industry can be seen for what it as and the role that it plays within our lives.
Despite the fear that COVID-19 has created, and the damage that is being done as a result of the very poor choices and decisions that our Politicians have made, there are good reasons to be positive about what the future and the post-COVID-19 world will hold for us all.
The stranglehold that big business, the banks and the finance sector has on us all because of the way that money is generated, manipulated and given false value by the trade in commodities like oil is being broken.
Right now their grip is being destroyed by a tiny little Virus that neither we, the Government nor they can control.
A great door has been opened and we are literally entering a different World to the one that we have all previously known.
Money is nothing. It is an idea. A construct and nothing more. Money only works because we consent to it being a means of exchange. Yet it has become so important in our lives, we have culturally come to the belief that the possession of money and the other trappings of material wealth are the only things of value and the only way that we can truly assess what someone is actually worth.
Having our lives shutdown by the Lockdown has began to show us all what money and wealth is really worth. We have a choice between attaining and attempting to keep a false material wealth that always sits outside of us, or recognising the true value within us all that is never in transition and remains and intrinsic part of us all.
No, I am not making light of the pain and anguish that many people are already or are likely to go through in the coming weeks and months simply because the Chancellor and the Johnson Government haven’t got the financial support for everyone who has lost their income right.
In fact, one of the most telling reasons that the Government has got this all so very wrong, is the inherent belief within the establishment that Money is the god that underpins all things and that it must continue to flow at all costs or everything will go wrong.
It won’t.
The lesson that the Johnson Government will soon learn if it has not done so already is that they should have used the responsibility and the power they have to bring the economy to a halt whilst they dealt with the COVID-19 emergency, instead of continuing under the ridiculous assumption that bailing out people and small businesses because they suddenly have no income was the right and only thing to do.
This Government has simply turned an emergency into a crisis and made things considerably worse for us all.
Because of what our Politicians have done, as individuals, as communities and together as a Country, we are now set on a pathway which is going to cause us all a considerable amount of pain.
The flip side is that we are already and will continue to look, feel and think differently about the World around us and the way that things are being done.
Our values are already changing and are going to change further still. Whether it’s as simple as being because we can now see how working from home can introduce a much higher quality of life, or that we don’t need the regular visits to restaurants, coffee shops and out-of-town shopping villages – simply to be happy as we once thought we did, we are collectively going to see life and everything around us through a very different lens.
We will no longer see celebrity and status as the be-all and end-all. Instead we will see the value in conversation and relationships with others around us in ways that we can already appreciate today, that before the Lockdown we never even realised we had.
The march of globalisation is now over no matter what any banker, economist or business leader thinks. Jobs once lost from the UK will ultimately return.
We are going to want to shop locally with local traders and local producers who we can trust to be there in ways that big business cannot. As we do so, we will help our local producers to produce more efficiently and more cheaply and we will see the value in consciously considering and supporting the use of shorter and more considerate supply chains for the provision of everything that we use in our everyday lives.
The political system in this Country will not survive what our current politicians have done.
The Political Parties we have are part of an establishment that is out of touch with the realities of life for those who are governed.
Those who govern us in the future will have to understand everything that they are working with around them in the sense of a genuine and empathetic three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees world view.
Governance is going to be about the consideration of consequences in all that a Government or Authority will do and no longer about what a politician can gain from getting a job, rather than what they are there to give and do on behalf of us all.
We are going to work together and see community and collaboration as a way to do things for the benefit of everyone, rather than just a way to further our own cause. The power that is there to be harnessed by working together will be beneficial for everyone, because it will no longer be about money and its imaginary value, but about caring and consideration for all.
Much too much credence and power has been given to people who call themselves specialists and experts in one or other field and they have played a significant role in bringing us to where we now are. They are usually highly intelligent people with qualifications as long as your arm. But intelligence given by anyone without care, consideration and thought for others is wasted. It will never account for anything of real value in whatever they do.
The real opportunity that has come from COVID-19 will be the fall of money as a god, the reevaluation of what real wealth really is, and with it the return to a way of being and seeing the world where everyone has value, no matter what it is they do.
2020 is going to be a big year for us all.
It is inevitable – even whilst we are still going through the period of good will in response to the Government Shutdown – that rumours and stories about this or that which is going to make things ‘normal’ again is about to arrive and go off like a bomb.
Sadly, we are likely to go through this process many times, especially with media of variable quality and provenance coming at us each and every way.
The great hurdle-race of teases began yesterday with stories that a Coronavirus antibody test is being mass produced and would go on sale and be distributed by Amazon and Boots next week.
‘Game changer’ was a headline on papers and many Tweets alike, and it was very clear in the minds of isolation-weary people that less than 48 hours after the Prime Minister announced the shutdown, this could all be only days from its end.
Within what seemed like no time at all, the whole idea was shut down during the afternoon Downing Street press conference. It was made clear that the test wasn’t ready and wouldn’t be available to the general public in the first instance, even if it was.
The response to this brief period of untamed excitement and hysteria, from the Government and it’s advisers certainly raises questions about how long they really think this shutdown will be sustainable.
How exactly would the Government propose to manage a situation where let’s say half of the population has not had COVID-19 and is confined to their homes, and the other half has not?
Is the Coronavirus Crisis going to be over when everyone has lived through catching COVID-19 – whether they had symptoms or not? Will it be over when everyone is either immune via exposure or vaccinated with a vaccine yet to be discovered, tested and made. Or will the Crisis be over when the NHS can cope with the treating the critical proportion of everyone who has not been exposed – all at once?
What might be worth consideration is that the information concerning who has immunity and who hasn’t is going to be the most dangerous fuel that could be added to the fire that the Government choosing these measures and in particular this form of shutdown is destined to create.
Yes, we need health professionals tested and cleared as quickly as possible and as often as necessary so that they can either continue or return to their work.
But if everyone has access to this information at once and too quickly, there is a real danger that it will create a massive societal divide. A definable difference where the way this Crisis has been mismanaged could see those who can demonstrate they have immunity demanding a return to normality, whilst those who haven’t will experience nothing better than home imprisonment with the accompanying social blight.
How does the Government restore balance within the UK Community and its People then? A National Coronavirus Party like pox parties for kids? Throwing everyone into a room together and infecting them deliberately like the way they dealt with Smallpox here in the Eighteenth Century?
It would be ridiculous to think that life can resume for those who have had Coronavirus, whilst the shutdown continues for those who have not.
And herein lies the problem. Because the Government’s plan to manage this now has an indefinite timeline – if it is to succeed and get through to the stage where normal life can resume across the board – without civil unrest or even worse at first being involved.
The big problem with the approach the Government is taking – which sounds like an effective way to manage the spread and impact of the virus – is that at the same time it is creating an untold number of other problems.
None of the measures the Government is taking go far enough. They don’t consider or take care of the real impact of the physical shutdown for the wider population which by its nature demands that life should also be put on hold for them financially without cost thereafter, for the whole period of time that this specific plan the Government has enacted demands that people have no life outside and remain at home.
Sooner, rather than later, the inadequacies of the Government Strategy are going to be shown as it unravels. The pain for so many people that it will cause will be made all the worse because it was something that the Government chose not to avoid.
The reality is that no matter how much pain and personal tragedy we see paraded on the TV in front of us each and every day, the fallout from the poor decisions and inadequate action on the part of our Politicians right now is going to be far worse in the impact it will have through debt, the loss of income, the permanent closure of businesses and shops, bankruptcies, mental health issues and yes, the loss of lives through suicide and other forms of early death. The impact won’t only be visible just now in the days, weeks and months the shutdown might take. It will hide itself like every other injustice without a name, continuing to reap a terrible, unseen, but unnecessary harvest thereafter and for a very long time.
Whilst the academics, commentators and opinionati are busy dismissing the suggestion that such outcomes are possible because there’s no credible evidence in their view to suggest it could be right, the fact is that people in this Country are and have already been suffering for a very long time because we have had and still have the wrong politicians who have a completely shutdown, blinkered and self-serving idea of what is right.
The ineptitude of our politicians is stunning.
The problem that millions of people and businesses right across our country are facing is that their income has already stopped, soon will do, or at best is going to be severely reduced.
So what does the Chancellor do?
He sets them up with a loan.
And that’s for the specific people he has actually identified – certainly a long way from being them all.
We don’t know how long the Coronavirus Crisis will take to complete its course. We don’t know when ‘business as usual’ for any industry or occupation will be able to resume. We certainly don’t know if trading levels for any company will then have even the remotest possibility of returning overnight.
So when faced with losing either your wage or your business losing at least some, if not all of its trade, the last thing you need is a loan – even without interest – that is open ended in its value because you don’t know how long you will need it for; loans that will already be unaffordable to pretty much everyone because it’s not something that you have either made allowance in your monthly domestic outgoings or business income vs expenditure budgeting for.
For a Chancellor of the Exchequer – and a Conservative one at that – to not understand the implications of what would be no more than a cynical headline-grabbing plan in normal times would itself be very profound. For him to do it at a time of National Crisis, when people and business need genuine help to survive, whatever the duration, and then be able to return to their own normality at some point in the future whenever that might be is profoundly ridiculous at very best.
Whilst the Tory troops are lauding the whole effort and shouting plaudits suggesting that this is the best Chancellor we’ve ever seen, the reality is dawning on many people that the measures he has announced is little more than yo-yo politics, where what appears to be given to those in need at speed will just as quickly return to the hand of the giver on what is a deliberately transparent, yet firmly fixed string.
Regrettably, the approach that the Johnson government is employing in the handling of the Coronavirus crisis is akin to something that would fit right into the conspiracy theorists playbook.
Talk of confining the public to their homes for many months on end; the shutting down of public events, gatherings, and pubs and now a series of financial measures dressed in the rhetoric of being there to help and support us, whilst in its cold and hard reality does anything but.
At best, it all points to a disproportionate level of control being levied upon the public at large by an inept Government living in fear of its own responsibilities and driven by the interests of a very close cadre of financial and business interests that it feels unceasingly obliged to prioritise and serve.
God help us all in a few weeks if the Public become tired of what may well quickly prove be a misdirected overkill and people then take to the streets. Because all of this ineptitude on the part of a Government that thinks that with an 80 seat majority it can do no wrong, really will give currency to the words and actions of those who will prove themselves to be far more dangerous than fruitcakes and loons.
The Government has a level of power and the responsibility to use it at a time of National Crisis like this that it never has before.
We may not be at War. But the circumstances are potentially as severe nonetheless.
This means that the Government and in particular both the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have an incredible opportunity to step beyond the restrictions and shibboleths of so-called peacetime protocols and carry out the real functions of the Offices of State that they are there for.
But to do this they must lead and not be led.
No civil servant, no adviser, no specialist, no expert has the knowledge, training or experience to come up with the comprehensive solutions that will factor in everything that needs to be considered.
They certainly have no way to know if what they do suggest, advise or contribute will turn out being right.
That means listening to ALL of the advisors, specialists and representatives whilst keeping in mind that all of them will have their own bias and self interest in the solutions that they offer. But that even when the solution they offer might appear to work, it wont work for the many if it prioritises financial or other benefits to the few.
In the first instance, to be equitable and to be fair to EVERYONE and not just the usual suspects and same old few, our Leaders MUST instruct the Civil Service, Industry and the Financial Sector what the solution will be and not make it voluntary for them to support or options that they can choose on the basis of it being like advice.
Breaking completely new ground it might be, but if Boris wants to go down in history as the PM who saw this thing through the right way and got the job done, this talk of £300 Billion in the underwriting of loans and grants needs to be scrapped immediately and replaced with radical Standstill Legislation with key points like these addressed fully in clear and unhindered view:
What the Country needs:-
What we don’t need:-
Above all, the solution that will work now and for the future must be applied on a blanket basis.
By taking over and underwriting essential services and ensuring that EVERYONE has at least a basic income that will cover the cost of a weeks food, the Country and everyone not working within it will be in the best place during the crisis to financially survive and then thrive once this terrible chapter has ended and is over.
The benefit for those who continue working in roles like the emergency services and in our hospitals, the benefit in kind will be that they receive a payment holiday whilst they are working. That’s a sensible and fair bonus for doing their bit for community whilst we all do our bit for each other to ensure to survive.
images thanks to dreamstime.com
Brexit has been created by a phenomenon, the elements of which many of us are still failing to understand. For non-decision makers, this is just a social problem between people who are usually friends. But for our politicians it has now become an elaborate game of pin the tail on the donkey which risks much more than a simple prick to the finger if they get their blindfolded judgement wrong.
The exquisite mix of having a government led by people who do not believe in what they are doing, trying to deliver working solutions to problems that they do not understand would in any other situation be recognised for what it is. But politics has regrettably moved on from an age when it really was in some way chivalrous – if it ever really was, and power being all, is all it has now become.
This insidious environment does not lend itself well to the power of original thinking. Trust has become as interchangeable with myth as proof has become with fiction, and unrelated history has become the benchmark of reliability against the future that we can also not personally see.
Measuring the possible impact and consequences of Brexit against such a backdrop is therefore down to either fortune telling – which is at best no more than ‘an educated guess’, or of relying upon economic viewpoints and philosophies which have been developed on the basis of events that have already passed, rather than what will actually happen in the future.
Put simply, nothing like Brexit has happened before and nor will it happen again, as even the smallest difference – perhaps down to the outlook of just one of the key players involved, could deliver an outcome which we could never imagine.
That the Government and Ministers responsible for any part of the Brexit process may or may not choose to rely upon reports which have been devised in this way and within this unique set of circumstances, is perhaps more about their own take on the opinion of others, rather than anything we could really label as setting out to deceive.
Whether they be Specialists, Experts, Economists or not, it is little more than opinion that they actually give and we would all do well to remember that even then, nobody has the ability to offer such ‘expert analysis’ of an event which has not already taken place.
Yes, we all have concerns about what is to come as a result of Brexit. But staying within Europe would not in any way have meant that a stable future of any kind was assured. And it remains worthy of note that whilst Brexit may prove to be temporarily challenging for us, for the UK to have remained a member of the EU may in time have proven to be truly catastrophic.
image thanks to fortune.com
Adam Tugwell 