Tag: Globalisation

The role of British Farmers has been neglected at our peril. Sadly, the politicians won’t see it until it’s too late, so it’s the Farmers who will have to begin the localised food supply chain revolution instead

Farmers are by nature, the most creative and entrepreneurial managers, engineers and technical workers that I know. They are, or rather they become these multitalented vocational giants by living lives that involve operational management, frequently calling them into action at any time, 24hrs a day, 365 days a year – pretty much from the day that they are born.

Farmers are, in effect, the complete antithesis of our Members of Parliament and the political class. And it’s because of the lack of understanding and respect for what British Farmers do, that the politicians we have – whether in Government or not, have allowed British Agriculture and all of the industries allied to and feeding into it, to reach the state that they are now in.

The problems that British Farmers face remain closely aligned to what their European counterparts are experiencing.

Indeed, whilst many from what in 2016 was the Remain camp are still pushing the narrative that leaving the EU and the whole Brexit vote was a gargantuan mistake, those same people are strangely silent when it comes to comment or discussion on what Farmers within in the EU Member nations are facing right now.

Across Europe, unelected bureaucrats and out of touch politicians are pushing an agenda which will see Nation States close down some of the very best food production in the world. All at a time when supply chains are already collapsing, there are growing food shortages and in no time at all it will not just be hungry people who are out of sight and out of mind that could be the ones who are about to starve or go without.

What underscores the futility and the madness of this perverse strategy, pursued by people who have never been at the hard end of an operational business in their life, is the reality that their grand plan mirrors the ridiculous decisions made by the political classes across Europe not only to shelve and mothball, but to destroy fossil fuel burning energy plants and sources. All coming under the ridiculous assumption that buying in supplies and services from elsewhere from across the World is not only safe, but can be sold to the public as being green and therefore alright.

Yes, you did read that correctly. The leading classes of Europe and the UK too, are and have for some time quite literally been shutting down, wilfully neglecting and even deliberately destroying our own national systems of production.

The politicians we have elected to look after our best interests have been making us all vulnerable to whoever they then do some kind of deal to buy replacement supplies and services from.

All of this is so that Politicians can pay lip service to fulfilling an impossibly idealistic promise of achieving Net Zero – or some other departure from reality based narrative they are pushing that isn’t just economic with the truth, but is an outright lie.

Why is the lie so important? The lie that the politicians tell is so important, because it’s just another lie to cover up the impact of another very big and very damaging lie about the benefits of globalisation and commercialisation – which is what the EU was always really about.

The irony should be lost on none of us that Globalisation and greed-based Commercialism are the real and genuine cause of all of the climate and environmental problems that we do genuinely have.

Equally, we should be under no illusion that the climate and environmental problems that we do genuinely have would go into free fall, in the direction of positive change, the moment that we stepped back from the money is god and a profit led existence, and allowed on-shoring, relocalisation and the protectionism that is now essential to the UKs future to be restored.

Whilst it will never be said about the European Union, even by many of the Brexiteers who never really understood this part of the EU Membership travesty themselves, the EU and everything about it has just been one disastrous exercise in globalisation and commercialisation.

The Common Market and everything that followed as part of the EU Project evolution was a self-serving spin off of the Globalisation myth, repackaged with the lie that with the overarching politicisation and centralisation of the European sub version, the issues that befall the removal of international barriers and the many risks it brings on a Global level, would never be our own.

As many of us can already see with just the Energy Crisis alone, this foolishness – however well intended, doesn’t work when so many differences of opinion, cultures and different ways of being are involved.

We can all see what has happened as a result of Western Governments responding as they have to the war in Ukraine, when the same politicians had destroyed our own self sufficiencies in order to ‘open up the doors’.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact of all the very poor decision making that got into full swing long before Brexit, Covid and Ukraine were ever in the frame.

Sadly, the system collapse that so many within the elites, the establishment and our own government are doing so much to hide, is already well underway.

It’s just the case that we are not all going over the cliff at the same moment in time. That’s why not all of us can see it. YET.

However, the fall of an entire industry that will affect all of us – our Farming Industry – is most definitely already underway. And we fail to realise, accept and understand this at our peril.

Yes, food is on the supermarket shelves. We can still get just about everything we could possibly want. So you are probably asking the question, ‘Why should we be worried about Farmers and British Agriculture now?

Sadly, we will not believe that life can be any different to what it is now, until it already is.

If you need an example that makes sense of this, cast your mind back to the beginning of 2020 when the first lockdown began and then life changed for us all in an instant.

We may have forgotten Social Distancing and Lockdowns for now. But many of the direct consequences of disastrously poor decision making on the part of our politicians is only just beginning to materialise now, nearly three years on.

Amongst all of the issues which are currently popular, the ability of the UK to feed itself is strangely absent from that list. Yet the UK Food supply is now at massive risk of collapse – That’s the supply of the food that we need to meet our basic needs and not the ridiculous variety of imported and mass processed items and ingredients that we have become used to.

Our Basic food supply is at risk for a number of reasons. These include the centralisation and globalisation of food supply chains which are going to collapse; the way that British Agriculture has been placed at the mercy of innumerable agents, resellers, speculators, traders and middle men who take massive profits whilst adding no value and push farm prices down, whilst pushing retail prices up; and decades of reconditioning under the auspices of EU membership that has led British Farmers to rely on subsidies that have taken away the incentive and freedom to compete.

There are many more.

The situation regarding our food supply is much more complicated and serious than it is possible to do real justice here.

The real tragedy and threat to us all, is that because our Politicians created or led the implementation of the market structures that are currently at work – even though they did so in no small part on behalf of the EU – everyone, and most importantly our Farmers, are expecting our politicians to ensure that every issue created by Brexit, along with the collapse of global supply chains and the fallout of other events such as the War in Ukraine, will be dealt with – as it is perfectly reasonable and logical for us to be able to expect.

They have not. They are not. They will not be addressed by the politicians we have.

I have been writing at length about the changes, challenges and difficulties we face. But this isn’t just the interpretation of one former politician and businessman sharing the reasoning of their own concerns. A former head of MI5 has warned about the issue of food security, as well as the National Farmers Union itself have been sounding the alarm.

The real problem that even these very credible sources cannot counter, is that our politicians are so out of touch and prioritise whatever they believe to be in their best interests.

It is not until you really begin to understand just how out of touch with reality our politicians actually are, that you can then start to consider and appreciate that the British People are heading for an extraordinary amount of pain, that would have been both unnecessary and avoidable IF we had politicians that fulfilled their responsibilities as they always should do.

Getting people and especially Farmers to realise and understand that the solutions will not come from this government or any new government that is formed from the political parties or groups that are known to us and that we have on offer to us today is challenging indeed. Especially as it means that the solutions we now need, through restructuring, onshoring and relocalising supply chains to a what we would recognise as being conversant with a much more traditional form, MUST be led with British Farmers and all of the related industries right out in front. Just as the political change that we all so desperately need must also come from the grassroots up.

I began writing this blog by making reference to the ingenuity and industriousness of our Farmers. This has already been well illustrated by the many ways that members of the Farming Community have already diversified their businesses, to become manufacturers, growers, producers and retailers of a very different kind, taking back control and managing every step of the process from farm to fork themselves, or working collaboratively on a very small localised scale, where it can quite literally be said that many hands make light work.

Whilst our Politicians will not accept this probably until it is too late to avert further harm, UK self sufficiency in food production, as well as the majority of the key things or basics that we are going to need, is not only now strategically key to our future. This is how world events and the UKs circumstances will soon dictate that they MUST be.

We cannot wait for the politicians to change their minds, or it wont just be the cost of living crisis, but shortages of basic foods that make British People hungry too.

Our existing politicians will always exhibit loyalty to the very system that has broken the back of British Farming for no other reasons than greed, profit and control. The existing Public Policies on Farming, Fisheries and Food have certainly never been for the purposes of benefiting UK Industries or British consumers – no matter the lies and the lies to cover up those lies that we have been continually told.

Please can we all wake up before its too late and there is nothing left to work with. We need a revolution in farming and we need it to happen now.

It will not come from the top and must run from the grassroots up. Farmers must be at the middle of local food supply – the way it should always have been.

Advertisement

The UK will go hungry as the food supply collapses. But Boris and all the political buffoons seat blocking our Parliament will continue to have their day…

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone in big business or government has any real concern about supply chain security, when the Conservative-friendly Daily Telegraph carries a story about the CEO of the UK’s Marks & Spencer retail chain now being on a 4-day week for a salary of £750K. Meanwhile, the real people at the other end of the wealth divide are working every hour they have and cannot even afford to buy food from one of the stores.

I will leave the timing and reasoning for this announcement, along with the raft of announcements from No.10 suggesting that our self-regalvanised PM is only now ready to his job to the reader.

But to say all of these deliberate distractions overlook the many elephants in the room and particularly the questions surrounding what happens to us all next would be comical, if it were not the fact that for the majority of us all, shit is about to get very real indeed.

Call me dramatic if you like. But few of us will accept that we are already in the process of a massive financial and systemic collapse until it actually hits us and we can feel the pain pushing into our own existence or life bubble in some way. Regrettably, that day will soon come.

However, whilst things like the housing market collapsing, or small businesses going bang because they simply cannot raise employee pay will inevitably hit or touch the lives of us all differently, there is one very profound and potentially very hard-hitting way that the collapse of the systems we currently take for granted is going to touch all of our lives in the same way. That’s the production, supply and the availability or shortages of food.

Before I go any further, it is important to get to the point that the supply of many of the foods that we probably all enjoy at home, from takeaways or when we go out to a pub or restaurant for a meal, are simply not going to be available in any of these ways anymore. Furthermore, this change to our lifestyles could well be pushing its way into our lives in perhaps just weeks or months from now.

The ingredients, the processing and the transportation of the foods that contribute to what might best be described as our very exotic, but nonetheless unhealthy diets aren’t just sourced from right across the world.

The foods we eat and the ingredients used to make them are processed here there and everywhere too.

The journeys that make up the pizzas, pies and puddings that we have all been conditioned to love crisscross continents and countries in various and accumulated forms. All before they finally reach the shelves of our local supermarkets or distribution centres, usually wrapped in a load of packaging that will immediately be thrown away, just as soon as they have come through our doors.

That the global supply chains that support and provide for all of this are collapsing right now is problematic enough.

But the real problem for us all that accompanies this collapse, is that even the majority of our most local producers (that’s local farmers and growers) buy the materials they need and then supply the meat, milk, cereals, vegetables and fruit that they produce into what is in effect part of this highly centralised operational business model.

Farmers and growers in the UK and across Western Countries do not produce or supply in a way that means that any of us could simply walk up to the local farm and buy or trade with the farmer to get the basic foods that we need, when everything that we know and take for granted about the supply of foods and goods today breaks down.

The processes that take raw foods from farms and turn them into the products that we love to eat and buy are massively complicated.

This complication has itself been encouraged and legitimised by the creation of many different industry-serving laws and rules. Not least of all by our friends in the European Union, that became just another way of dressing up greed-driven globalisation, but in a more politically acceptable continent-wide way.

What we or rather more importantly all of our seat-blocking politicians in Parliament are failing to grasp right now – whilst they keep on attempting to distract us with soundbites and other hollow scheme imaginable, is that we have a massive food crisis ahead of us. A food crisis that is looming large that will not be temporary. And that in terms of re-tasking, repurposing, redirecting, and reimagining the most essential forms and mechanics of our basic food supply chain – we are now critically unprepared.

Its not as if Farmers and Growers aren’t trying to make our politicians aware that there is a crisis coming either.

The issue with the politicians we have today is that everything they stand for, have bought and dragged us into and has been motivated by or is tied up in the money or greed based system that we currently have.

By even acknowledging that the focus of food supply must immediately become local, as part of the now essential drive to make the UK self-sufficient in all basic foods, goods and services in the shortest time, our politicians will be admitting to the wrongs of the part that they and many others before them have played in contributing to this mess over decades.

That however, is not an excuse for those in power and in our Parliament not to act now.

When we are all facing a change to our reality and a process of transition where there is a growing possibility that British People are going to starve, the public representatives that we have elected to look our for our best interests should be prioritising this change to local supply and UK self sufficiency in every possible way.

Why our broken system has lasted for so long

Some of you, probably many of you will be thinking that a system that works ‘successfully’ for over 50 years, cannot really have all that much wrong. But that will probably be because you haven’t yet been knowingly touched by the fallout from the collapse of a system built only on greed, as you can and will be.

The foundation of this entire system, has been making money and how to improve or develop the ways to make more and more money, along with ways of increasing the profit margins from what everything within the system already does.

Rather ironically, it has been the same time and distance from the hardship caused by wars and nationwide events that allowed the ‘elites’ to manipulate us all into believing this created world was real, that wooed them into their own false sense of security. One that encouraged them and the people desperate to be and become like them, to overlook the basic rules of contingency planning, of making reasonable provision against risk and of not doing things to make even more money – not because they should, but because they can.

The whole global economy or global economic system has been built on luck and not judgement. The luck being that until 2020, there had been no nationwide or world events that had been big enough to blow the whole house of cards down. That is, before some other clever device or fudge could be invented that could arrest the timeline decline of the system, or keep it going long enough so that the incumbent elites could wash their hands of it, pass it on to the next generation of greedy bastards and proclaim ‘keeping the lie going is now your problem, not mine’.

Dependency on Foreign supplies compromises UK security

Perhaps the biggest cost of globalisation that has never been factored into the equation (or more likely it has deliberately been left out), has been the issue of what happens when a Country becomes dependent upon supplies of goods or services that come from another Country, or Countries that may not always have interests that are mutually aligned or have like for like benefits with the UK at their heart.

The best example of where dependency can compromise the security of a country or of the interests of that country is very current and comes in the form of the dependency that Germany has on Russia for its supplies of natural gas.

During the Ukraine crisis (late February 2022), Western Countries excluded Russia from the SWIFT International Banking System as a punishment (also known as a sanction) for invading Ukraine. Yet Germany had a special dispensation to not do so, as it would not have been able to continue paying the Russians for gas supplies, if it had continued to be involved.

Whilst Germany was most compromised by becoming dependent upon Russia for energy supplies, the reality is that as a Country, the UK is far too dependent upon other Countries for the supply of essential goods and services too.

For as long as this situation exists, and for as long as we have politicians in control of the UK who either cannot or will not take tough decisions on energy supplies or the supply of anything that is essential to us as a matter of course, we will remain at risk of high-level compromise with countries that supply us and can therefore bribe us, as our security as a Nation will remain exposed.

Corporate Interests and the Elites are doing everything they can to patch the growing holes in the Global Supply Chain

When a car you love is failing, you keep doing what you can to keep it on the road

Covid set off the power within a latent chain reaction that anyone who understood the fragility of the global system was waiting for.

The reason the global supply chain hasn’t just stopped overnight – which to be quite fair is exactly what many onlookers would naturally expect – is because those who have a vested interest in it are doing all that they can to try and rescue it in order to make it work.

For those invested in it, the invasion of Ukraine came along at what they believe to be a very fortuitous time.

The Collapse of Global Supply Chains: Profit at every turn meets practical reality

Horizon scanning: What’s Horizon scanning?

So obsessive has the motivation of greed for profit been, that those driving this way of doing business have come up with ever more creative ways to defy the practical realities of business and production.

These have included the development of ‘Just in Time’ methodologies and ‘Lean Manufacturing’, which are heralded as brilliant ways to manage profit driven commercial business. But pay very little heed to world events or what any kind of unforeseen circumstance might have in store.

The response of different governments around the world to the Covid Pandemic, quite literally brought many parts of the global supply chain to a halt.

The massive costs and margins of this ridiculously fragile system had been dependent on every part of it continuing to work endlessly – as it was always expected to do so – with only what we would consider to be the minimum of contingencies having been planned for.

So, when a worldwide virus that inept political leaders completely overreacted to and used fear to make populations think that it was much worse than it actually is became involved, the global supply chain was exposed in a way that was rather like the first of a squillion dominoes that had been set up to knock each other down being flicked.

And so has begun a process of destruction. Beginning slowly with those dominoes falling one by one.

De-Globalisation: The End of Globalisation is already underway

Globalisation and the model of global business and supply chains that existed at the end of 2019 – before the Covid Pandemic hit us, no longer exists as it did then, in either functional or operational terms.

In the same way that our system of government and the political system that supposedly drives it has built itself by putting sticking plaster on top of sticking plaster when it comes to public policy and building it into the dysfunctional system that exists today, the way that industry and the global business system has been developed has also been without thought for the consequences or impact at even the closest degrees of separation.

What we have ended up with is a so-called ‘Global Economy’ that is in fact a house of cards that has little in terms of foundations and is already on the verge of collapse in many different ways.

The only real beneficiary of Globalisation is self-interest and greed

Globalisation was seen to work because we have all been fed the story that it benefits our self-interest in some way.

Yet the only beneficiaries from the process of Globalisation were and always have been the people and corporate interests that have created, developed and directly profited from an unethical system that exploited everyone and everything in some way – and that includes even those directly involved at every part of the supply chain.

The true cost of Globalisation

The true driver of Globalisation was always the increase in profits for every company that played or that plays a role in the supply chains that are involved.

But the true cost of Globalisation has been the loss of jobs, the loss of skills, the loss of training opportunities, the loss of businesses, the loss of communities, the loss of national self-sufficiency, the impact on the environment, the impact on quality of life. And yes, the list goes on extensively to cover all of the impacts and consequences related to every part of that list which have changed life for everyone – enriching the few, whilst making life poorer in every way conceivable for everyone else.

Everything is relative

Whilst we were told that the cost of everything would be lowered by Globalisation and the economies of scale that centralisation of the kind that naturally follows then presents, the reality of building a global economy was that it hasn’t been helpful to the UK or to any of us in any way.

Purchase prices have never really fallen. But the prices of production have. And it was this very small truth hidden within what has been a very big lie, that has created difference in the views of the benefits and disadvantages of globalisation, and what has made the perpetual myth work

The move to globalisation was never based on the reasoning that it was supposed to be. It was and still is only about profit and nothing more.

UK self-sufficiency and localisation of food supply chains from British Farms should now be the Government priority. Not vanity-led trade deals that undermine them

Globalisation as we knew it before the age of Lockdowns is over. We may not feel it, understand it or in most cases even see it. But the World has been changed by the chain reaction that was set in motion by the COVID Pandemic.

Daylight is now beginning to shine upon all the hidden, self-serving and myopic powers that influence our way of life. They are coming together in a concert of chaos with COVID conducting the orchestra – right at the fore.

It may sound dramatic. But the subjectivity and focus we have on everything beyond our own lives and the bubbles we unwittingly live in make it easy for us to ignore how things really are at the objective level. We are and have been living through significant National and World events that have consequences neither we, but even more importantly our politicians, can or now will avoid.

Loss of the realism that a genuine overview provides leaves us out of touch with the reality of what is happening. We take for granted that daily life will always go on as it has and that everything continues in the same way.

Yet the assumption that an encyclopaedic range of foods and products will always meet us when we walk through the supermarket doors or click online is a storybook waiting for a bad ending. And that ending is now almost certain to emerge.

Whilst the Government, media and the establishment they serve tell us that everything will return to the pre-COVID ‘normal’, concocted narratives cannot change nor head off the impact and consequences of the decisions they made, the money they created then spent, and the stories they have told to control people during a pandemic.  

The change is already underway. We can already see it in the questions over home working and many revaluating where they wish to live. Change will touch everything, and this will include even the most basic parts of life, including the clothes we wear and the food that we eat.

We simply don’t need all the things that we buy, eat or drink, and many of us already know and understand this. Whilst it may sound moralistic to say so, it is certainly no coincidence that as a population we are becoming so unhealthy when we are happy sleepwalking through life in the way that we do.

The good, wholesome, locally and ethically produced foods that we genuinely need to live and feed ourselves would not be expensive if we prioritised production using the most localised supply chains possible. It could mean the ingredients of the meals we eat have not travelled outside of our own County boundaries or been carried much further on their journey from farm to fork.

Some may snort at the mere suggestion of returning to a world where butchers, bakers and every kind of traditional village shop or business sell you the produce and goods that have come to them for preparation from local farms and producers.

But this is the way that the world we know will go if it is again to begin making any kind of sense, and we do not need the Government or ambitious Ministers attempting to open up trade flow to Countries that will undercut our own farmers and producers. Indeed, the Countries that Trade Ministers are now talking to should be actively and demonstratively encouraged to develop their own enhanced forms of productivity as we all work towards the level of national and localised self-sufficiency that the post-COVID World and the collapse of global Supply chains will soon demand.

In the simplest terms, the rise and threat of what has been called the ‘Indian variant’ of COVID demonstrates some of the starkest lessons of how this virus works. The ZERO COVID solution that this Government has tied itself to will at some point have to be flipped to become one that we learn to live with it and treat it the same as we do the Flu.

Whether we continue going forward under the premise that COVID control is the only priority or change and accept that there are other ways to live, we can no longer allow or encourage the mass movement of people or encourage unnecessary international supply chains just for the sake of making profit in any way.

Borders will literally have to become borders once again. No matter how much we might we deserve that foreign holiday, we are no longer living in a world where there will continue to be one rule for ‘wealthy’ countries and another for all those that the ignorant and greedy thumb their noses at and call poor.

Viruses and the impacts of ill-considered human behaviour do not recognise boundaries. They have consequences for us all.

For better or worse, COVID is a virus that is here to stay. Global eradication is not possible with the political mindset that the world currently has, and we will soon have no option but to learn and act upon the realities that the spread of a respiratory disease through an interconnected version of the World presents.

Meanwhile, the decision making and behaviours of politicians, banks ad big business as they have struggled to maintain control during the Covid Pandemic has led them to supercharge the growth of the many problems that greed and profiteering have created.

Going local, real localism and putting our communities at the forefront of everything we build our lives around will now become key to addressing the change that events will create and to become happy and content in ways that we have culturally long since forgot.

Farmers, producers and those who run and maintain very local services and cottage industry businesses are going to be key. Allowing any foreign country to undercut local production of any kind – no matter our historic ties – will quickly become one of the greatest acts of economic self-harm in the post-COVID world.

This is not about having a downer on Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA or any Country with which we might have once found it desirable to extend trade with. All Countries across the World are going to have to face up to the realities of the step away from globalisation to closed borders and what this really means for prioritising local production too.

Self-sufficiency for food and essential goods must become both a National and Government priority for the UK. Within this, we must look to promote and encourage everyone to shop and focus what they do and the lives they live locally in pretty much the complete opposite way that globalisation and the greed that underpins it has done.

Government must guide and support the development of truly local cooperatives. Legislators must embrace and utilise the freedom we have following our unshackling from the EU to legislate in ways that mean it is both practical and cost effective for every service that businesses require to produce and manufacture locally will not only exist but will thrive in such ways that lead to local products and services being made available to everyone at prices even the poorest in society can afford.

Local Enterprise Partnerships or alternative bodies like them should be used to join up the dots and encourage this growth locally.

Instead of encouraging agriculture and food production to become ever more focused on ‘cost effective’ production that means they increasingly only become viable with the economies of scale and size, our legislators must look at regulating and restricting all of the malign influences that take money out of the supply chain, thereby increasing end-user cost. They are currently adding no value, as part of an equation that increasingly leaves heathy food being a luxury that only the financially wealthy can afford.

Farm shops, farmers markets and the systems of local production that can and must feed into them must be the direction of travel. We must reject the reliance upon retail giants and a system where shareholders and financial speculators make ridiculous sums of money after the companies they ‘own’ can appear to move goods around the planet more cheaply than our own producers can make them. The practice where supermarket buyers crush any farmers ability to both supply them and remain profitable must come to its end.

British Farmers are some of the most innovative and entrepreneurial members of society that we have. There is little doubt that if we both embrace and support the role that they can and will willingly then take within a new and diversified platform for UK food growing and production, the true value to us all of the wider rural and agricultural sector and the community that underpins it will come into its own and be good for us all.

If ever there was a right time to tell the EU to bugger off, that time is now

I make no secret of my concerns over how the Chancellor is currently setting in motion a chain of events that will start off by short changing some and end up short changing everyone.

I don’t agree that the policies he and Boris are chucking out each day go far enough and have little doubt they are going the wrong way. I certainly don’t agree that they are equitable, fully considered or that they will help us collectively as individuals, communities or as a Country in any meaningful or sensible way.

What I do acknowledge and support is that no mater whether the measures they are taking are in effect wrong for us or right, they are at least being taken by this Country’s current Leaders with at least the aim that some if not all of our population are the priority – which is at least along the right lines.

What We nor they needed right now is interference or posturing from the EU in any way.

Yes, the UK may technically still be operating under the rules and terms of Membership of The EU whilst the interim, negotiation or transition period continues and goes through.

But as we effectively left the EU on 31st January 2020 – before all of the Coronavirus issues really began, there is no reason why the Supranational Government of the European Continent should now have any right even to attempt to impose its will in this way – when that interference could prevent at least some of the people in our Country from receiving some form of financial help.

Our Government may be right or it might be wrong in the way that it has so far chosen to subsidise businesses, give them grants, underwrite loans or simply pay or take care of at least some of the bills.

But in a time of nationsl Crisis like the one that we are now in, it is essential that our Government has the agility and freedom to make its own decisions and the best ones that it can for the People it is there to represent, as the government of any independent country should always be able to do.

The reality is that the Brexit debate and the issues of Leave vs Remain have now been given a very different perspective about the benefits of localisation that our own policies provide, the disadvantages of quasi and full globalisation that the values underpinning the EUs open borders promote and why independence and sovereignty as a nation doesn’t stop us from having a healthy working relationship with our neighbours and the rest of the world, but does leave the decisions which should always be taken by us in our hands for us to decide.

If there was ever a right time to tell the EU to bugger off, that time is now.

 

 

Changing Politics for the better Pt 2: Bringing Jobs & Manufacturing home

Globalisation and the Global Marketplace have been sold to us for decades as the place where a forward-looking economy should belong.

But like everything else in the world of the old politics, there is no mention of the consequences for us all, for our industries, for our communities and our Country as a whole, by embracing this kind of deep-seated policy which is sold to us on the basis of making the cost of living cheaper, whilst the true and far reaching costs are never mentioned, but massive profits keep coming to shareholders, the City and all of those who are intricately involved.
The truth about globalisation is that money and making more of it for those who are financially invested in it is all it ever has been and will be.
The benefits for everyone else are far outweighed by the costs that are significantly higher and reach into so many different areas of life negatively – and contrary to everything that we are told.
When businesses move factories across the world, they do so to save money on the costs of operating here, whilst exploiting less advanced economies elsewhere, thereby taking all the benefits from selling into our own economy, without having to contribute anything meaningful here or there.
It’s exploitation and blatant profiteering irrespective of how positively the concept is then sold.
As an economy, we are better prepared, resourced and able to be specialists as manufacturers and producers in certain things.
So it is with goods and products that fall outside of this where we should engage the wider world positively and encourage them – through importing those things – to do the same kind of things.
For goods, services and produce that British People use regularly or pretty much every day, the businesses that provide them should be based here, pay tax here and benefit the wider economy which is benefitting their owners in a very dynamic way.
Localism is a term that has been heavily misused by politicians in recent years. But that doesn’t mean that a Good Government should not now pursue a genuinely localistic view.
Companies and their owners should be encouraged and incentivized to provide goods, products and services that not only appeal to the people that live near to their premises, but are also used by the people they employ.
This isn’t about having a downer on capitalism. It’s about keeping capitalism as a concept that is open and beneficial to all and not just the few.
Globalisation sounds great until the penny drops that it is completely screwing everyone here, over there and is only beneficial to those who have money involved.
A Good Government MUST engage with the global economy differently, encouraging the import of goods that we cannot produce here, whilst securing our own market for all the things that we can supply and do well.
It could begin by:
  • Imposing additional taxes on goods imported that could be made or otherwise produced here.
  • Taxing British Companies that have moved manufacturing to other Countries to encourage them to return.
  • Create Laws and Legislation that underpins realistic levels of profitability, so that Companies cannot simply create a cost vs. benefit disparity on the basis of the money they earn for shareholders as an excuse to move abroad .
  • Incentivize new startups and developing businesses that have the ability and desire to thrive in our Markets.
  • Changing employment Laws to make employing British People more attractive, whilst ensuring that the choice for employees to work with contracts that benefit them and the businesses that they work innovatively are voluntary in every sense and not just imposed.
  • Promote and further the concept of responsible capitalism and encourage a business culture where profit is not simply measured in financial return alone.