Tag: Leadership

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.

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

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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.

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

The 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.

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

Logic tells us that Boris should go. But we are a long way from logical times…

The one thing that the Tories have got right in the past two and a half years, was to wait until after the Queens Platinum Jubilee Celebrations were over, to announce that a Confidence Vote would be held over the tenure of the current occupant of No.10.

Whilst I suspect that the magic 54 letter mark was reached well before the end of last week, the fact is that people outside of the Westminster bubble really needed a little time away from the darkening skies that are forming around our reality. An opportunity to remember what being happy and being happy within a community can really feel like.

This isn’t likely to have been possible, if the ongoing question of Boris Johnson’s future was to have continued to have been the focus over the weekend. And it wasn’t as if with talk of him suddenly finding solutions to the NHS crisis, the man himself didn’t give it a try!

However, uncomfortable as the reality may be for everyone to accept, right now, there simply is no better option for any of us than to continue to have Boris Johnson as our PM.

Yes, it’s a controversial view. Johnson really is the antithesis of everything that a good British Prime Minister and public representative in a serious democracy should ever be.

The problem we have is that the Conservative MPs and Ministers that surround him, as well as Kier Starmer and ALL of the other Opposition MPs offer nothing that is any better than what we already have.

In fact, with any of the alternative options that we have today, we have to reconcile ourselves with the reality that things could quickly become even worse than they are already destined to be.

Like it or not, Johnson is nothing more than the figurehead of an entire political culture that is rotten from top to bottom. A political system that has self-interest and the greed-based culture that is destroying everything we know, firmly at both its base and at its core.

Even a General Election wouldn’t remove these people. It would not remove the threat that they are. Politics and power to do anything good in the UK is currently held up behind a closed door.

The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats effectively have a monopoly on who gets into Parliament.

The three main parties are gatekeepers, allowing access only to those who follow their closely shared ideals which only look and sound the same.

The political parties preclude and obstruct the entry of politicians who have the genuine ability to lead. Today, there is zero hope of us having leaders who will never compromise themselves and their responsibilities to others by being nothing more than yes men.

A massive problem for us when every decision for MPs revolves around saying yes as just another step to the top. But then the person at the top can only say yes when it’s time to lead, and leadership is also a lot about knowing how and when to say no.

Outside of our Parliament, the options for the next General Election – that may now come a lot sooner than we were expecting – are not any better.

Those that talk up ‘alternatives’ believe that the alternative we need is as simple as giving the electorate a choice that means the incumbent parties are simply swapped or replaced.

But we cannot go on with anything or anyone that represents the greed-based culture and the thinking that underpins and fuels it like we have now and have always had before.

Top-Down doesn’t serve any of us anymore. It never has and we are now at reaching the end of that line, and hitting the buffers is going to come with a crash.

Changing the Prime Minister or the government for just another version of what we already have will make no difference before the runaway train reaches the end.

The problems our politicians have created are now too serious. Printing more money – which will just speed the disintegration of everything up – is the only tool in their kit that any of them now have.

Logic tells us that a changing of the guard would mean that new faces will be ready to solve all the problems. But they won’t.

This whole political culture is invested in everything that is wrong with the UK today and doing the same things that caused all the trouble all over again will not lead to different results.

The MPs that we have will not stand aside and let new people and new thinking take their place.

We therefore have little choice but to wait until circumstances force their hand and push them out of the jobs they so wanted and the responsibilities that they now wish they didn’t have.

In the meantime, it’s all about damage limitation. That very regrettably means it’s likely to be in our better interests to leave Boris and his massively difunctional administration in place.

The real risk to us and to our future is the way we think and the way we see power and the people who are in control of everything right now

Right now, we have idiots controlling everything. People who are fundamentally just the same as you or I. But because of their experience of life so far believe that everyone outside of their ‘bubble’ is stupid.

They think that we are all stupid, because most of us do not understand what is going on and aren’t even looking out for what is happening around us that is hidden in plain sight.

They are confident that the world as they see it or plan for it to can be maintained, as enough of us can always be bought off (because we are also selfish and greedy), and that this is how they will ultimately always remain in control.

Levelling Level | The right people in politics = the right decisions on behalf of us all

With so much that needs to be corrected and changed for the better, it may seem a little trivial to go full circle back to the issue of how politics works, where Levelling Level first began.

However, we are in the mess that we are in, and we are faced with the huge challenge of addressing that mess, because we have had the wrong people in politics for such a long time.

We have touched on the reasons for this issue in different places throughout this book, but the problems that poor leaders create for the rest of us will not be solved and will just be changed or transformed into a different form of those problems, for as long as we don’t set values-based rules or boundaries around the quality and ability of the people that we choose to elect.

Like everything else today, too many politicians are recruited by the existing political parties based on how their candidacy will look. The majority don’t have the life skills or experience to make decisions that will have an effect on other people’s lives, and even those who could offer something useful don’t have the conviction and confidence to stand up to a system that rejects or ejects those who do not conform.

Politics or rather public representation is NOT a job. Despite having a system or accepted career pathway for wannabes who have decided they will be Prime Minister when they are children and then do degrees and early career jobs that line them up as perfect tick-box candidates for the existing political parties, public representation or being an MP is NOT a career too.

We have fallen into the trap of thinking that things like popularity, the ability to speak or argue in public and being able to stay on message are the attributes that make a politician good.

But they are not good for anyone, when the key attribute of a good politician is having a real understanding and appreciation of how life works for different people in very different circumstances, and what strategy looks and feels like for others, when it is implemented and then put to work.

If our political system is to be healthy and work on behalf of us all, rather than be maintained by people who are only out for themselves, we must only elect people who see the role of being a public representative as a vocation or calling based on rich and meaningful life experience, and not on personal agendas in any form.

Taking us out of Covid Rules too quickly could prove as costly as it was to take us too far in. Boris is pulling political stunts that defy practical reality and the chances are it will result in more pain

The chances are, showman or not, Boris Johnson has come to hate the weekly spectacle that is Prime Ministers Questions (PMQs).

As recent weeks and months have increasingly come to confirm that as a Politician and Leader, Johnson really is as vacuous as he looks, it has become apparent that the Prime Minister only feels at home in the spotlight, where he is the centre of attention and able to feel like he is fully in control.

Whilst Keir Starmer really offers nothing new or anything better than our Conservative Prime Minister, the Labour Leader has managed to outshine Johnson at PMQs and made it appear that he wasn’t expending much effort to do so.

Minded of this and the wider campaign that No10 is currently engaged in an attempt to make everyone forget Boris’ lies over Partygate, all without him either apologising or being cleared, it should perhaps be no great surprise that Wednesday’s 12 Noon focus of the News Channels would be seen as a great platform to produce one of those white rabbits from the hat, and end up killing two birds with one stone.

Getting to his feet in Parliament yesterday, Johnson opened by announcing that Covid rules would end a month earlier than the 24th of March as had been intended. In one moment, he effectively stole this week’s PMQs show.

On the face of it, the diversion worked a treat. There can be little doubt that as the Metropolitan Police Investigation grumbles on, the complete removal of anything left of the Covid Rules the Johnson Tories imposed before it ends will quickly become less than relevant in the minds of many. To them, the whole thing will be over and what Boris has done won’t matter anymore at all.

It’s a cynical ruse for sure. One that depends on the Covid Pandemic really being over. One that relies on there being no future Lockdown or series of steps backwards towards it brought about by another variant that causes massive problems. Problems that will be in no small part caused because of the way the Government has already messed with people’s heads.

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I’ve always been against Lockdowns and the unnecessary Covid Measures that followed and have been one of the few to have continually spoken out against them right from the very start.

My view has been based on practicality. With dealing with the realities of all the things that happen as they happen. Not as the Politicians have been doing, by building a strategy based on what ifs and things that haven’t even happened yet and in many cases never did happen or never will.

So, with this in mind, I find myself in the rather curious position of suggesting that lifting all remaining Covid Rules may not be the best thing to do. That yet again and in very polar fashion, Boris is not showing leadership and taking the practical approach to the situation that good leadership would. And that he may just be taking a massive bet with our future, in the hope that a lifetime of bluster will come to the rescue and this time deliver a Lazarus-esque personal win.

Practical reality:

That we are where we are in the UK today, is very fortunate given the way that other Countries are experiencing and dealing with Covid. Not least of all because the Government created a situation where so many people still believe that Covid is worse than any other illness like flu that have long been endemic. Instead, now requiring that special treatments for Covid be imposed upon the healthy many, rather than sensibly offered and given to just the poorly few.

Viruses continually mutate. Whilst the Omicron variant turned out not only to dominate the previous Delta variant, but also cause less problems for those who have been infected, the euphoria, celebrations and release from Johnsons Jail with out any kind of follow up, could, very regrettably prove to be very short lived. That is IF we don’t continue to take the minimum steps that we can to protect the UK, without them being a burden on normal or everyday life.

We have all lived through the experience of how quickly Covid spread across the UK, once we had let the virus in.

No new Covid variant that comes from any Country outside of the UK would be any different. And if a new Covid variant should prove to create outcomes for people that are more severe or complicated than the Omicron Variant, chances are that with each and every Covid rule removed, we could very easily find everyone, and everything being taken right back to Covid ground zero in no time at all.

Such an event would not be manageable in the soundbite-heavy ‘its time to live with Covid’ way that Johnson and his Government would like us now to believe. This is simply because of the latent fear the Government created that rests within the minds of so many. Fear that itself cannot and would not be mitigated because of the failure of the Government to refocus, reform and develop new and improved resources so that the NHS can cope with an upsurge in cases. A scenario that will inevitably lead our fearful political leaders to shut down the Country once again, just so our dysfunctional National Health Service can cope.

Lockdowns were never necessary. But the use of Behavioural Science made them so.

Furlough money, Covid loans, grants and subsidies were not the way to help and support businesses that couldn’t operate or employees that were unable to work.

Together, they have scarred and damaged individuals, businesses and the economic situation of the UK itself. There is no way that we can go through all of this madness all over again and come out of it in a way that will work.

Keeping our communities, regions and the Country able to function for however long it takes until Covid itself, or the way that people respond to are no longer a threat to ‘normal’ life should be an ongoing priority for the Government. One that is in the best interests of us all.

For instance, the situation no longer exists where international travel, shipping and holidays come without the obvious risk that a visitor to the UK, or a resident returning will bring a new Covid variant in.

Border checks and tests are a minor inconvenience for the small number of people who make the voluntary choice to travel. And it is only by restoring and keeping practical steps just like these in place, that Boris or indeed any of our political leaders can be sure of a real, people-focused win.

Forget planning a way out of the Government’s Coronavirus mess. Decisions have to be made in the moment and on the basis of doing what’s right

Paying attention to the different schools of thought that exist on the Government handling of Coronavirus, the Lockdown and Social Distancing provides an invaluable insight into how people are really feeling about everything right now.

No matter what side or position people have taken, all are talking and hinting of increasing desperation as the search begins for some kind of plan that will get us out of this wholly avoidable mess.

Sadly, the common theme is a lack of confidence in there being any clear way to deal with the problems the Government has created – all of which are set to get considerably worse.

There is a way to deal with what happens next, along with everything that will continue for the UK and us all thereafter. But the solution and its application doesn’t offer the surety that desperate people believe that they need in the time of a massive crisis.

The perceived need for any kind of immediate relief leaves many vulnerable people at the whim of any charlatan with a platform who starts preaching that they have a plan of some kind.

Meanwhile, there are very significant injustices present within society. But the establishment and mainstream media narratives that things are good for everyone simply because we have had peace for a long time and our lives have been improved by the advancement in technology facilitate the rather convincing argument that we have never had things so good.

The flipside or dark side of this cultural two-edged sword is a level of complacency and taking what we have for granted that may never have been seen before.

This regrettably includes a complete absence or lack of regard for what good or genuine leadership from the political class should look like and what will happen without it – as it now is – when things go wrong.

Peace and the apparent stability of the neoliberal age tells us that plans can either be created or that they already exist in the form of systems and processes to cover everything. This is where the Government response to Coronavirus has gone so tragically wrong with no guide to managing this crisis for politicians existing on record or being fixed in place.

What we need as we go forward through this horrid situation and face the coming reset, is a method, an approach or a way of doing things that works without the false security provided by having or identifying some kind of plan.

Plans are simply the projected method of doing something. They are the anticipated route map of how to reach the end of a journey before we step off. Yet our cultural default position has for too long been to reframe plans as the aim itself and to develop them as if we begin every journey from a standing start.

We have lost the ability to collectively visualise what we want as a Country. We no longer understand or relate to what it feels like to be inspired or to have faith and therefore be motivated to accept hardships, to take steps or to have them taken on our behalf to get there.

The facilitation of such inspiration is what genuine leadership is all about. It has been absent from Westminster for a very long time.

Influence, bias, self interest and myopic thinking have led the political circus for decades and as one set of self-serving politicians has been replaced by yet another, the rot has become institutionalised to the point where even the cleverest and most empathetic amongst them have no idea how to use or harness the power and responsibility they have to help and guide the lives of others.

Decisions are made with no respect for the basic law that governs the reality and consequences of what happens when any decisions are made; that the power of any decision lies only in the present and we cannot now make the decisions for choices that will follow thereafter.

The myth of assumed respect for politicians, government and those with public responsibility that we gain through conditioning is suggestive that at government level, the simple laws of life that affect you and I as we make daily decisions are different when they are taken with official responsibility for others. That they affect us all and that as such they would never work in the same way as they do when they are taken just for you or I.

Yet they do. The ways decision making works is just the same for everyone. The politicians we have are not special in any single way.

So when we consider what we want to happen next, whether it be for the Lockdown and Social Distancing to come to an end, for businesses to immediately go back to work, Schools to return full-time without restriction in September, or decisions to be made on the basis that life for us all can be improved, these decisions must be based only upon the factors under the decision makers control at the very moment in time they are made.

It simply defies all the rules of logic to think or believe that a plan can be made that cannot be influenced by the passage of even the smallest amount of time and that events and the actions of others that take place within that tiny time frame do not have the power to impact events in some way.

When we can and do accept that this is what real leaders do when they lead, and that the gift of any good leader is their ability to weigh up all of the information that they have at their disposal at that very moment when each and every decision is made, always making the decision that is right – not for them – but for us all, that is when we will have people running this Country who are suitable, qualified and above all READY to be in control.

That is when we can all have confidence in the future of this Country and won’t need the security of any plan.

This unintentional tyranny is the worst kind of all

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Many intelligent people really do think they know and understand what living under tyranny would look and feel like. They snort at those who have awoken and are desperate to make sense of the chaos this Government has unleashed by falling back on conspiracy theories that are the first thing that make sense of what is happening and provide a tangible vision of the world to come.

You do not need to be in chains to be enslaved. Yet generations of politicians have allowed money to become the god of everything. Millions of us are in debt and now condemned to financial slavery for the rest of our lives.

You do not need to be behind bars to be in prison. Yet these politicians have placed such restrictions upon life that freedom is no longer ours. Indeed it has become a cause for nostalgia as we look back to the world before Coronavirus and Boris Johnson. We foolishly dream of having again what once was.

History demonstrates the harshest of lessons, When we look back at chapters such as the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, it is easy for those very same intelligent people to question how a whole population could have been so oblivious to what was happening around them, when with hindsight everyone can clearly see that it was.

It’s rather like the victim of abuse who makes excuses for their attacker or looks inwards and tells themselves that it is they who have caused the problem or that it is them who read the situation wrong.

Even when subjected to things we disagree with at a deep level or even cause us considerable personal pain, it might not be until we experience the eureka moment where we are caused to stand back and look on from a distance that we begin to understand the bigger picture.

It is only away from being blinded by the detail that we recognise the reality of what is going on and can begin to admit to ourselves that it is wrong. Often by then the damage will already have been done.

If you have watched the BBC three-part documentary ‘Rise of the Nazis’, you will see how difficult it was for a regime to takeover and become functionally tyrannical, even when there was genuine intent on the part of its proponents to do so.

Yet when the genesis and evolution of a tyranny is created under what we are told was a very temporary measure to ensure the safety of the electorate, and the politicians driving it have no idea what they are doing and don’t possess the vision to see the consequences, the disconnect between what people will willingly accept at a time of national crisis because politicians are the ones we trust to understand and do what’s best, and what is really being done to us, is for many, way beyond any kind of rational thought.

We are being deceived by the way the establishment is framing their response to Covid-19 and the Coronavirus Pandemic as being business as usual in a time of crisis – that is in the sense that they are completely in control and know what to do.

They don’t.

What is more, the priorities that these politicians have are covering one lie with many others simply to save their reputations and therefore their political necks. Yet they are precipitating an incalculable number of as yet unseen problems for us whilst they believe they have the consequences for themselves fully under control.

They don’t.

So entrenched have politicians become in the storybook they have created, they will not put their hands up and stop this juggernaut from moving and picking up speed.

This Country has already entered a new age of tyranny with many of us completely unaware that we are there. There is nothing normal about what the Johnson Government has done or what with its Social Distancing measures it is increasingly requiring us to do.

There is no scientific, logical or moral basis that gives legitimacy to anything that they do.

Coronavirus is not the problem. It is the politicians that we have and the Pandemic is simply the excuse they are now deliberately using to legitimise what are unnecessary tools of social control.

They will not relinquish these measures voluntarily and the levers of the power they are misusing will have to be wrestled from their control.

We all desperately now need someone or something big enough with enough sense and responsibility to do so.

Politicians who have no understanding of the consequences of their decisions and recognise no danger in their actions will keep going to the point that they do so or the point of destruction – whichever comes first.

Regrettably for us, the politicians we have are already making the UK socially unrecognisable for us all, whilst breaking the Country financially and destroying the economy as they do.

Keir Starmer will not be the man for all seasons that we now so desperately need.

When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour Leader, Boris looked World class.

That, for Boris, is the only relevant comparison that we have, becuase he and Keir Starmer are two different sides of the same damaged political coin.

With Boris star waning quickly indeed, a new Labour Leader who looks prepared, clinical and unlikely to lose his calm whilst jousting with the Prime Minister at the Despatch Box seems a reassuring sight indeed.

But it isn’t the case.

Sadly we have become used to judging politicians by differences between them that are surface deep. We are not used to looking further at what they represent and what difference they would really make in power.

At a time of National Crisis, set to go from bad to exponentially worse, we really should be clear how different the political leadership of the UK needs to be.

Boris’ moment was Brexit. He did good job of appearing to save something the Establishment had concluded we had already lost.

That Boris found himself Prime Minister owes more to the absence of anyone remotely Churchillian in stature in Parliament, than it does to the effervescent Clown show that was funny at a time when we had to accept there was no choice due to the way our political system is sewn up. Put bluntly, Boris was the best of a very bad choice.

Starmer appears a different beast for sure. He has the mind and experience of a Barrister and the track record of a high flyer from being outside of the Westminster too. His early performances at PMQ’s give the impression that lined up against the UK’s No1 Baffoon, this is a man on a mission who will get things done.

Sounds great. But that’s where the differences stop.

As far as the Establishment and the broken political system that propelled both Boris and the Leader of the Opposition into their roles goes, both are there to pursue their own ends and ideologies.

So as far as the impact of the changes they have the capability to make on our behalf, they are very much cut from the very same perpetually disappointing cloth.

A background in Law running part of the Establishment itself is no qualification for the good statesmanship that we need in a PM right now.

Like everything else, Law has become all about the money, the contacts, gongs and personal gain, rather public service and the assurance of a morally correct framework in criminal and civil law for this Country – as it should be.

Starmers qualification and experience offers hollow promise. The background he has, as all barristers and solicitors who have been elevated to parliament on the suggestion they make good MPs is fundamentally flawed.

They are adept at using the Law and policy to achieve their political aims. But they are not equipped nor have the understanding to ensure that the rules and framework they are using to govern is either morally or ethically right or fit for purpose is any way.

As the UK descends into chaos best visualised by what it would have looked like if the crew and passengers had clapped as the Titanic went down, we don’t have the time or lives to waste on going around the same old political leadership merry-go-round as we have done before.

Keir Starmer is not the man for all seasons that we need as PM.

It’s time to look beyond the usual suspects for the political change that will be required long before 2024 when the people realise that the time is now. 

 

Media ‘celebrities’ are obsessed with being the news rather than conveying it. They hold a big part of the responsibility for the mess this Country is about to be in and its time for opinion dressed as news to stop.

img_5628The chances are you will fall into one of two groups. Those who are watching the endless Coronavirus Show on the News Channels, or those who have all but switched off to the so-called ‘news’ programmes completely.

Watchers will either be cheering on the Government and all it does. Or most likely, they are too terrified by the messages that are playing hour by hour on what feels like autorepeat to miss a single moment or a minute of coverage that could end up making the Coronavirus Crisis even worse than it is already in some way.

Those who have switched off have long since realised how much destruction the Media is causing simply because they are being allowed to portray news in their very own distinctive way.

The Media – or rather the people they appoint to be their face – used to simply be Television and Newspaper Journalists. Not any more.

In their own minds the people who read us the news have become celebrities. They are no longer there just to ask the questions to find the answers that we all want to hear. They see themselves there to be the answer and therefore the news itself.

No better example of this exists than the preamble that Journalist Emily Maitlis gave at the beginning of Newsnight on Wednesday evening this week.

Emily has been lauded on social media for her sermon rubbishing the idea that Coronavirus is the great leveller and spelling out the story for what it is really is. Yet her speech to a captive audience was subjective, very little to do with what critical thinking would identify as news, and in layman’s terms was little more than opinion. All given to us by the shovel load right in the middle of a National Crisis when news and information is the one thing that the Taxpaying Public should be able to expect the BBC to be getting right.

The slant, shading, unsubtle nuances or spin contained within this specific tirade was very much in keeping with the message that the mainstream media has been propagating right from the time that the Coronavirus Pandemic took off in this Country.

A message that is wholly negative (because only bad news sells) and intended to deliberately foster fear about the Virus itself. It seeks to remove the boundaries of context and suggesting that ‘protecting  the NHS’ and the medical or scientific operation to address the health issues relating to Coronavirus are the only thing that the Government response should really be about.

Yes, the BBC and other mainstream channels have been carrying other news about what the Chancellor has been doing. But because they cannot sensationalise the worsening of life experience for the many people who were suffering in this Country already and the exponential rise in numbers of people who will soon live that experience themselves, they pick up these real life stories that are happening and drop it as quickly as they can so they can replace them with their idea of what could be.

Put bluntly in real terms, a newsreader cannot sell you suicide as a reason for you to be fearful in the same way as they can sell you a Pandemic because there is perceived to be an element of personal choice when someone considers killing his or herself, whilst catching a virus offers you no choice and so fear is sold to you in different forms as the only protection that there really is.

What the Media fail to recognise and therefore tragically overlook is that because they have worked so tirelessly to sensationalise the whole Coronavirus Pandemic using words and messages that are in most cases likely to be more than 95% opinion, they collectively hold significant responsibility for driving our Politicians to instigate this Lockdown without consideration for the real consequences.

The speed the Lockdown was imposed and the Government remedies came into being in response to noise the Media was making, provided us all with ill-considered solutions to the financial hardship that the Lockdown has imposed on people of all demographic backgrounds, career pathways and financial positions.

Regrettably we are not being led through the Coronavirus Crisis by the politicians that we should have.

We are being led by politicians who are the product of an establishment that sees no benefit or reason to be in touch with or to understand the people it is supposedly there to govern and care for.

Such is their inability to lead, our leaders are themselves being led by a media that has become wholly adept at creating policy by dog whistle without even knowing that they do so.

If real catastrophe is to be avoided across the uk, the Lockdown MUST be ended now.

However, to make things work as they should to benefit us all, it has become essential that the Media are pulled into line and reprise their true role as the providers of news and information rather than simply throwing out what they think we would like to hear and telling us all that its the same thing as news.

This is not about freedom of speech, freedom of expression or freedom of the press.

Real news should always be reported fully and without spin or angle. The only exception for us not to receive news would be when it is critical for the national interest to not do so.

This is about tackling misinformation and fake news at the highest level.

Make no mistake. Opinion in the place of news is what fake news really is.

The fact that this massive abuse of a position of public influence is considered legitimate doesn’t make what the newsreaders and journalists are doing any better or any more in the public interest than the stories of the conspiracists and social media channels where it is clear that the story being told has been built up on the basis of how the channel or username holder was paid.

The Government MUST stop prioritising the messages that it churns out on the basis of how newsworthy it is. The pre-briefings and copies of speeches that haven’t been given need to stop. Above all, the role of the Media has to be seen for what it is: a conduit and no more.

It is not the end in itself that those working as the names and faces of these Media outlets insist we should believe it to be.

To End the Lockdown in a way that causes the least pain that it can, the politicians need to start ignoring what the Media are telling everyone and start talking to the people who really count. Not just medical people or scientists who they tell us know what to do.

By taking then wider view and considering all elements of this very large equation, that’s how they can find their way to making decisions that are in everyones interests and deliver results that they cannot visualise now, but will turn out to be right.

image thanks to wikipedia.co.uk

 

 

Want a real Brexit and Corbyn kept out of No.10? – A General Election is now the only way…

images-2Coverage of the result of the Peterborough By-Election actually felt different. Maybe even a little odd. But perhaps prescient of the direction our Politics is now going – a place where there is no control or script and it all seems to be in the hands of the gods.

Within hours of this blog being published, the gurus of political interpretation will have of course broken the whole thing up and began spinning it into many different, but for them, primarily self-serving ways. However, the reality will nonetheless remain underneath it all that Politics in this Country has changed and things are never going to be the same again.

Yet the politicians refuse to see it.

They are still looking at everything coming at them through the lens of the old politics – and yes, I’m even including the Brexit Party as being one of them in this instance too.

To perhaps understand this a little better, it is important to consider the Peterborough result.

Yes, the Labour Candidate was Elected. But the Brexit Party Candidate wasn’t far behind them and it would be foolish to frame the Conservative Candidate’s 3rd place as being outside of the same room.

Somewhere, probably in London today, different conversations will be taking place around the realities of what can be gleaned from the way the vote was split.

Some of this thinking will simply be deluded. Some of it will be based on outright fear. But what will be common among all of it will be the view that the problem is outside of the Politicians hands, outside of their Party’s control and that it will be something or someone else who is getting it all wrong.

With the Peterborough result for these three Political Parties and the wider Westminster Polls being dispersed between them and the Liberal Democrats as they are, you can bet that the debate will end up for many of them concluding that First Past The Post is now redundant and should be replaced by some other form of electoral system that will benefit the de facto righteousness of their position – such as PR.

What they fail to observe, or deliberately overlook and therefore do not accept, is the reason that none of them – even with Brexit involved – is offering the leadership, vision and inspiration that is necessary to formulate the public policy that the People now want and is required of our Politicians and their Parties not just for Brexit, but as we step off into a world based on A New Politics beyond.

Playing around with the Electoral System will only benefit the Political Parties and the Politicians themselves.

It will sure up, consolidate and in some cases expand their presence and position.

But the upshot is that the opportunity to provide the kind of decisiveness and defining leadership that we now need in British Politics more than ever, will simply be lost.

Brexit and the future of this Country requires good leadership and the decisiveness that goes with it by the truckload. Without it the mess we are now in is set to get a whole lot worse.

What Politicians should understand from the results and polling as they are, is that no Political Party is currently capable of commanding a working majority in Parliament.

Without a working majority, neither Brexit nor anything substantial in terms of the changes to and creation of new Policy that our People now need is going to be addressed in any meaningful and lasting way. That simply has to change.

The biggest risk to Brexit and to our Democracy –  make no mistake that the two are now intricately linked – is that the new Conservative Leadership will continue onwards and go all out to enable a No Deal Exit from the EU by 31st of October – just so the Conservative Party can claim that they have achieved and can take ownership of that result.

If the current Parliamentary dynamic doesn’t stop them before they do so, there is a storm cloud awaiting them on the other side. Because it is there that the Remain majority in Parliament – if it has not been changed – will have an incredibly hard stick to beat the Government with, and the ability to make serious hay from the sunshine that they will see pouring over them from the inevitable problems that will follow a No Deal Brexit that has been executed in this specific way.

Taking the UK back into the EU on the turnaround of a sixpence is not something that any Political Party with designs or long term aspirations on being the natural party of government is going to want to do. Especially when the straightjacket that the UK will have no choice but to accept as part of a completely one-way and loaded bargain will inevitably become poison for whoever was to blame – irrespective of the Politicians who were actually involved.

The only way out of this problem is to recognise Party boundaries and tribal loyalties as the ties that bind all of todays MPs to the politics of old. The old politics that the public are telling them is not only flawed but is fundamentally wrong.

Our Politicians must come together to deliver on the issues. And the issue which is the doorway to solving all other issues is Brexit – whether our Politicians like that fact or not.

The People Voted for the UK to Leave the EU without any deal or ties. Giving us anything less will simply be wrong. This includes coming out of the EU and then taking us immediately back in, whilst MPs then sell their ineptitude and lacklustre attempts at managing the Process as evidence that the whole thing was wrong.

The only Political Parties that have the ability to coagulate around the fact, reality and message that a full and proper Brexit must happen are the Brexit Party and the Conservative Party. And it is within the Conservative Party where the real struggle is still taking place, as it has been all along.

The new Conservative Prime Minister must accept and then immediately act on the fact that without a General Election and securing the Brexit MP Majority that it will give them if they ask for Public support in the right way, the future is effectively lost.

To realise and achieve the alternative – which is a real and permanent Brexit, there is no option for the next Conservative Party Leadership other than to swallow their pride for the greater good and work with the Brexit Party to establish a ‘Grand Brexit Coalition’.

Working together these Political Parties can provide that Brexit Majority and then ensure that our Brexit and the great future that follows it will for all of us be secure.

If they fail to do so, the future is very bleak. It is one that revolves around Corbyn and his Marxist tentacles reaching out and destroying everything we value from No.10.

The cost to everyone in this Country from allowing this to happen will go way beyond the destruction of the Conservative Party. It will simply be too high.

Isn’t it time the Conservative Leadership put the requirements of real Leadership first and did whatever necessary to get the job done?

 

image thanks to unknown

The Brexit Party May well end up hoisted by its own petard if the UK Exits the EU BEFORE we have a General Election and a Brexit-backing majority of MPs has been secured

img_2163Beyond all the infighting and arguments over who actually won the European Referendum and how the results can be reinterpreted to suit the needs of vested interests, the Brexit Party could be getting a bit carried away with the pursuit of a 31st October EU Exit. That is unless they can accept that a fruitful outcome to this argument could have a lot of pain for them and all Brexiteers hidden in store.

Before continuing I need to make something very clear. That is I would be happy for us to be out of the EU without a deal as soon as is humanly possible.

But I also want us to stay out and remain out of the EU long enough so that both Remainers and Leavers alike can start to appreciate the benefits for everyone that will only come once Brexit is completed and secure.

Right now it feels to everyone as if Nigel Farage, his newly elected MEPs and the whole Brexit Party can write their own ticket.

But this is complacency rather than realism. And it could be the first step to ensuring that the whole Brexit project – that’s UK Independence and Sovereignty – is ultimately well and truly lost.

Farage turned his ire on the EU during a press call on Tuesday. Shouting at them that we are going on the 31st of October without a deal, and that if the EU wants better Terms with the UK, it’s up to them to come running, or sit there and count the cost.

Yes, it’s all-powerful rhetoric. And it’s already isolating all of the Conservative Leadership hopefuls bar one.

Yet what the Brexit Party and all of these Conservative Leadership Candidates have in common at this moment is a lack of appreciation that Brexit has and never has been as simple as the mere action of officially Leaving.

Brexit is terrifically complicated – in some ways on purpose I might add. And to fail to do the work necessary to counter this fact and have the right contingencies in place before we take the step out, could result in much worse for the UK than if the 2016 European Referendum on Leaving the EU had simply been lost.

The Parliamentary dynamic that exists today is going to continue to be a significant and potentially terminal problem for Brexit.

If we Leave whilst the Parliamentary Balance is significantly in favour of EU Membership rather than the UK being outside of it, these Remainer MPs will use every opportunity, every story, every fear present to ensure that the overwhelming numbers they have with the weak-willed who will then support them, will not only frustrate Brexit from the location of our short time outside of the EU. But will then be used to turn the UK around and go straight back in. This time on what will be ridiculously unfavorable terms, such as adopting the Euro and committing our Armed forces to a permanent, sitting EU Army.

This really should give every Brexiteer pause for thought.

I am aware that Farage is bigging up the chances that the Brexit Party will win big in a General Election post-Brexit.

But if a no deal Exit is fucked up by a lack of good leadership in a weak, Conservative Minority Government, combined with a Parliamentary Majority being there for Remain (or by this time Return), the public emotion will by this point have surely shifted from outrage against democratic injustice to what the perceived impact of the problems of the transition will be for the short, medium and long term. They will no longer be holding out for any hero unable to give surety to solutions in an immediate and tangible form.

It would be a mistake for any Conservative Leadership hopeful to consider this scenario and take any kind of comfort. Because the fate of the Conservative and Brexit Parties is now inextricably linked.

If Brexit should unfold this way, it will have been under your watch and your leadership. And that will mean that regardless of how strong and pertinent the warnings over Marxism and what the reality of a Corbynista Government will be, People will by then be looking for the first port in the storm and send their votes straight over to him.

Jeremy Corbyn and the henchpeople around him may well have read the political runes and this would explain why even now Labour seem unable to behave in any kind of joined-up way.

But make no mistake. If any of you would-be Brexit Leaders should succeed in pushing for or even allowing a crash out, no deal Brexit in October by apparent default, and have done so without going to the Country first, believe me when I say that Brexit blowing up in your face will be the least of your problems, because for all of us, things will be about to get a whole lot worse.

There are few who would call themselves fans of the current Conservative Party hierarchy. Conversely many will admire and respect what Nigel Farage has done.

But if the two entities don’t take a step back and see how they now need to work together and very closely, the war they are squaring up to fight – based only on Brexit alone – is not one that will be won.

The Brexit Party has the power to capture hearts and minds very widely over Brexit, but no ability to unify its followers beyond the Brexit question, with policies or indeed a party machine that can bring them all together as a credible, long-term political cause.

The Conservatives have forgotten what it is to be conservative and must embrace far-reaching and fundamental change. But they already have the structure and experience that with new thinking can bring A New Politics into being, be used as the vehicle to reunite us all and remove our divisions, then take us forward as the UK becomes an Independent Sovereign State and walks onto an entirely different world stage.

If the leadership of both Parties can now find a way to work with each other and respect that they can fill the gaping holes of each others Party structure at a time when to go forward there are simply no other options available or way they can deliver Brexit, succeed or remain involved, they CAN and WILL deliver on the Vote of the 2016 Referendum AND benefit everyone who has become involved.

None of this can be achieved without a late September or early October General Election based on Leave vs. Remain.

And to achieve the desired outcome, the Manifesto that is created must sell the benefits of Brexit as well as to promote A New Politics in order to achieve wider buy-in to win over the Voters who support the EU and Remaining with them – because to them that’s just the way that things always appear to have been done.

As Farage has proven with the success in the EU Elections in the space of just a few short weeks, a General Election Campaign can be conducted and won over the Summer, just so long as all those fighting for a real Brexit understand and accept that the political world has already changed around them and that General Elections are fought under a very different kind of sun.

 

image thanks to unknown

If Conservatives want to deliver the Brexit People Voted for, today is the time to have the confidence to vote No Confidence in all Theresa May has led this Tory Government to become

Counterintuitive as it may seem, the defeat of May’s Brexit Withdrawal Agreement last night, immediately followed by Jeremy Corbyn picking up the gauntlet that the Prime Minister had thrown to call a No Confidence Vote, has given the Conservative Party a lifeline and the opportunity to take control of the whole Brexit process that it needs.

No, we do not want and definitely do not need a Corbyn Government.

But we do need Theresa May to find some dignity from some where and accept that she is not the Prime Minister that this Country needs as it now stares at an evolving crisis.

The prefect storm which surrounds the greatest Government Defeat in recorded history, is the only reason that we this morning still have a Prime Minister May.

It was encapsulated perfectly well this morning when a friend asked me the very simple question ‘Why doesn’t the Conservative Party intervene?’

My response was as polite and honest as I could make it; ‘The people who have the power to do something all want May’s job and want a trouble-free run at it too’.

And it is within these circumstances; what is increasingly likely to become a National crisis, that we can see so very clearly that it was all so very avoidable, but self-interest, self-righteousness and blind ambition on the part of an out-of-touch political class bears all responsibility for the chaos over Leaving the EU that it has made.

The biggest problem is that the Politicians responsible are so blinded by their arrogance, they have no idea what to do with the child they have given birth to.

So instead they blithely press on as if they are incapable of doing wrong. As if they have no responsibility to anything other than keeping their jobs.

And amongst these non-representatives of the people, the worst of them all and most out of touch is Theresa May.

After the humiliation of the Defeat that she and the plan with which she is so personally entwined last night, a real stateswoman would have immediately resigned. Instead we see a powerless leader, so certain of her own right to govern that she is literally prepared to destroy her own Political Party, and worse, the future of a whole Country, simply on the basis of her believing that only she can be the PM to deliver something out of Brexit ‘come what May’.

The trouble is that something doesn’t look anything like the Brexit that the People actually Voted for. And by refusing to make way for someone capable of grabbing the wheel, she is going to drive the whole Brexit Bus over the cliff with us all in it, when the route was unnecessary and only a problem that she herself made.

Yet we are in a position where the problem could be resolved quickly, if the Conservatives were to come together, respect that the Vote of the People meant Leaving without what Remain have clumsily referred to as a ‘deal’, and accept that the first step to turning this whole mess on its head is to part company with Theresa May.

If the Conservatives back Jeremy Corbyn’s No Confidence Vote later today, there is a golden opportunity to reverse all of this quandary and ensure that the British People do get Brexit AND one in which WE ALL WIN.

Once Theresa May has been put in the position where she can be forced to resign AND the Cabinet collectively accept that the race for a new Prime Minister is not one that they all are equipped for or able to win, a new Conservative Government can be immediately be formed. YES, with nothing more than a swift and timely crowing, but with the purpose of doing what is strategically necessary so that the Country is once again capable of facing up to the EU AND achieving the People’s Win.

No, it won’t be easy. But by taking the time to look beyond what stares back at them from the mirror each morning, this may be the last opportunity to voluntarily embrace the true responsibilities of being an MP, come together, deliver a real and meaningful Brexit and consign any chance of a Marxist government gaining power and wrecking everything the UK has to the bin.

Please MPs, for once have faith in the decision of the People, in opportunity and the future that your being selfless with responsibility most assuredly will allow us ALL to have.

No plan is going to solve the Brexit problem. We need leadership without the unbridled ambition and we need it now

The only comfort for many of us peering into the Westminster fishbowl as it continues its daily mission to self destruct, is that there are at least some voices of reason breaking through this malaise, running contrary to the crap that various factions across the Establishment are trying to feed us, and bringing truth to power. Something that we so desperately need.

The real problem is of course, that with so many politicians so very obsessed with having their own ideas heard and prioritised – no matter the cost, very few of the people who are in the position to influence any of this mess for the better are hearing, considering or acting upon what wise voices now say.

There is an obsession with the idea that there has to be an agreed plan for however we handle Brexit. This is a fallacy and simply isn’t true. And as I wrote last July, the problem with the plan for Brexit, is that Brexit has become all about having a plan.

This whole perception that there has to be a fixed strategy in place before we can do anything at this level is one of the key reasons why Brexit and democracy itself are now in such a perilous state, and so many normal people across this Country are now feeling completely cut off from their representatives and wondering what the hell will now happen and if there is anything that anyone with any influence can actually do.

Whilst it makes curious reading when the Will of the People to Leave the EU was so clearly defined, the fact remains that there is no majority amongst our 650 MP’s for any plan or direction. A situation that in every sense possible means that for the People of the UK, democracy as good as doesn’t exist, and that the result of the EU Referendum is by a majority of our MP’s being at best ignored and at worst, clearly denied.

Getting out of this mess is not going to be easy. Not least of all because all the options that are being openly considered as being possible right now, have no guarantees that they would change anything.

A General Election might not change anything as at best we would still have most of the same politicians left in Parliament coming from the self-interested culture where the purpose of representing the people, once elected is in many cases simply forgotten if not actively denied. At worst, Theresa May could actually stay in No.10, not because she isn’t seen as the biggest part of the current problem, but that many Voters would vote strategically against the prospect of a Corbyn government – which for anyone who understands his modus operandi knows his brand of leadership is not how we want to experience the next 5 years of our future being defined.

A Referendum is in trouble before it could even be put into being, as its very existence would underscore the reality that far from only being in the process of dying, as far as the UK is concerned, democracy has already died. It doesn’t matter what stories influencers who should know better tell us, out in the real world across the UK, people haven’t changed their minds about Brexit, in fact they are more disillusioned now than ever, see the EU as the controlling foreign force that it is, and are desperate for the people elected to represent them, to actually do what they have already been told.

And whilst there are many left who are behaving like they have not just a chip, but a whole sack of spuds strewn across their shoulders, there no longer exists any such thing as the option tabled in June 2016, which is still being romanticised as ‘Remain’. The true relationship with the EU is now in a continuing process of being outed, they will never allow the UK to resume its former relationship as a Member and if the EU is seeking to keep indefinite control over our future as a condition of actually leaving them, just imagine what the price of being ‘openly’ joined to this pathway to the United States of Europe could actually do.

It may seem like the antithesis of everything accepted as being normal, but planning when we are in a situation like we are now, with so much fluidity, risk and the potential for disaster, is simply not something we have either the time, or the luxury that having reasoned debate – that the presence of a complete chamber of objective politicians would allow us to do.

We now need real leadership of a very different kind. Leadership that is guided only by the ambition of the UK and our future, with vision, humility and a respect for the age of consequence. Leadership that actually leads with the responsibility it has been given, rather than leadership which was only ever about gaining position. A situation we have no for too long been forced to try.

May must go and it is only the Conservatives who can replace her.

This talk of governments of national unity is not only dangerous, it would still be constructed of the very same people who have contributed to this unholy mess. People who are still dedicated to listening to only themselves. And with this kind of power, would continue to overlook everything that has now become important. Not least of all what the People of the UK have told them, and that everything which has happened since has itself began to model a different destiny for this Country, which requires new thinking and not giant leaps backwards of the kind to which they are clinging to – and not one to which Voters are in the majority inclined.

The question of who in Parliament could really replace May now. The ambitions of the Cabinet are now so inextricably linked to her Plan for Brexit that the question of how each and every one of their priorities, demonstrated by their acquiescence with this whole travesty could possibly show that they are now equipped to seize the moment and take this Country forward is not a story that I can honestly the Electorate stomaching for very long, should it be one that were now to be told.

Fresh starts require fresh thinking, and like the Conservative Party that is currently built around them, the Prime Minister who replaces May must be all about change, respecting the will of the people and no longer obsessed with the destructive tribal reality of thinking and acting in terms of either Leave or Remain.

Government is not the same thing as a business, and should never be run like it is one

AU491810_942longThe word ‘business’ conjures up different meanings for different people, depending on their background and of course what exposure they may have had to its use or application.

Most will agree that its use as a term suggests enterprise and methods of working which would sit snugly within a commercial environment. But should this word actually be applied to the modus operandi of any form of Government when the two terms are completely incongruous?

Much is made of the idea that the best people to run Government at any level are those who have a business background. One of the current arguments against the demographic makeup of our MP’s today is the substantial lack of solid business experience possessed by those who lead the Country from Westminster, with the accompanying notion that MP’s who have run or owned businesses of their own would somehow automatically have an almost esoteric level of understanding and midas touch which would solve just about any problem. They wouldn’t; they don’t and they never have.

With years of Local Government experience as both an Elected Member, an Officer and from working within 3rd Sector Organisations alongside, I have also often heard the term ‘business case’, ‘business plan’ and the idea often suggested that Councils are now run ‘like a business’ in meetings.

The problem with this is of course that the political leadership and members of Councils rarely have ‘hands on’ experience of running any kind of business you could draw reasonable parallels with themselves, and when they do, it is often the case that it has been so long since they did so, that any lack of an appreciation that time moves on or that things continually change will soon erode any tangible benefit.

Perhaps worse is the ability that Officers and Civil Servants have been gifted by political demographics and the opportunity to use such terms in plans, which are then taken as read by those who simply don’t know any better as being a true ‘business case’, when such ‘business’ cases could never be any such thing.

Recognising the differences between running a business in its purest sense, and running Government under the delusion that it can be run as business has never been more essential for today’s politicians, because neither Central or Local Government are businesses, and the people running them have to stop believing and behaving like they are.

A business is of course run for the profit of an individual or shareholders. All decisions will normally be made with the form of pay-off that they will receive firmly in mind. It can be expanded or changed to meet the demands of customers as it sees fit, and a business can choose which customers it may wish to target and how much profit it will seek from delivering any particular product or service. Its revenues are never guaranteed.

On the other hand, Government does not run to make profit, but to provide services and support for all those which it has been elected to serve.

Run properly, Government would not actively target any particular group of customers to provide a different quality of service depending on the feedback or profit that it gets from that group, and would work to meet demand for services as best and prudently as it can, well knowing that it has a duty to do so without seeking payment from one customer to pay for the benefits of another, or to irresponsibly borrow money from lenders that it knows it doesn’t have the appropriate levels of revenue to comfortably repay.

However, Government revenues – as long as they remain sensible – will always be guaranteed, and it is with this significant difference that come the even greater levels of responsibility than no one business should ever realistically be able to have.

One of the greatest dangers facing us as a society comes from the fact that politicians at all levels of Government have either failed to recognise these basic differences and therefore maintain them, or have willingly abused their ability to raise revenues to cover badly managed services or implement policies without any due regard to striking the balance for every member of this society or in applying fairness to all, while they have given every thought to political expedience and electability.

The British political system is broken, because it has adopted those very same values of a profit-making business, which are to further the interests of that business. For politicians, this comes in the form of power, whilst they have ignored the basic rule of business as they have done so; the rule which states they must deliver profit to every single one of the shareholders rather than to themselves. Profit in this sense should always be seen as the delivery of the same results for all.

So if our politicians really feel that they have to treat Government like a business, they then must also realise that if they continue to keep raising the fees on the same old products time and again without offering new products and value for money, they will soon price their offerings way beyond the purse of the people who normally pay, and the cash will soon start ceasing to flow.

Government is not run for a financial profit, any more than it should ever be so for the bottom-line benefit of just the ‘staff’.

Whatever their backgrounds, experience and level, politicians must remember that they are the managers; the facilitators; the decision makers; not the beneficiaries themselves – and especially so where the end profit is not even perceptively the same as what it would be for a business.

The time has long since passed when the electorate could continue to live decent lives, whilst those within Government continue to focus on the end result for themselves. Government is not the same thing as a business, and should never be run like it is one.

Osborne’s threats to break up Banks: True banking reform will take leadership by example rather than the issue of diktats to the financial leviathans for whom God is profit first and the interests of the very customers who keep them there come a distant second

Commercial Altruism is perhaps an aspiration, but a term which certainly describes the kind of ethics that we need to see exhibited more often within industry and certainly within the Financial Sectors where its absence has been so painfully apparent.

Any resistance to George Osborne’s plans to require Banks to split their retail and less-stable investment arms in attempt to avoid further Taxpayer-funded bail-outs will hardly come as a surprise,  and particularly so when politicians themselves hardly exhibit anything near that type of mentality. But is this really all that the Government actually has within its power to do?

Few could actually believe the sums thrown at the rescue packages of the Banks which had effectively beached themselves through little more than acts of greed and complete disregard for anything other than maximising profit on the part of a few – all at the cost of people who have paid perhaps not just once through fees; but twice by then paying out on the losses when speculation – upon what is effectively thin air – crashed to the floor, as anything without true foundation surely would. The true wonder is how they kept the charade going for so long.

Forcing banks to ‘ringfence’ funds and therefore prevent further Government intervention through the creation of dedicated retail arms, is hardly likely to encourage a growth in benefit to domestic or small business customers. It is in fact more likely to increase the cost of basic banking services to people who already struggle to make ends meet and to those small businesses that need to be subsidised themselves, rather than to be given no option but to subsidise focussed services that banks are currently reluctant to give.

The development and provision of a an easy-to-access or ‘peoples’ bank which would provide the basic account services that everyone is entitled to access is the responsibility of Government, and should be set up as such.

Providing basic free-banking services in this way would provide Government with many advantages such as access to unfettered borrowing streams without 3rd party profit margins being included. But it could also support the administration of ‘smart’ card payments to retailers by customers, restricting the purchase of certain items by those being encouraged into work, with the added benefit of instantly losing the stigma which would be associated with payments made with a non-bank-derived payment card.

Better still, a Government-based bank run as a public service and with a customer focused culture, rather than one based upon benefits to employees and stakeholders may be able to provide many of the products which those on low incomes currently seek such as ‘payday loans’ without the utterly unrealistic levels of interest, and also provide the low-cost services and low-margin lending which new and existing small businesses need in order to survive and then thrive as we have so very long been seeking.

Creation of such a new bank – or indeed adaption of one of those that the Taxpayer already owns – would require a radical change in thinking and the type of leadership which has been sadly lacking in British politics for far too long. But it could be done.

The real question here is whether the Chancellor and the Government really want to affect change in the way that the Financial Sectors operate.

True banking reform will take a lot more effort than simply telling the banks to split their operations or even go back to employing managers within every branch.

Reform will take leadership by example and the provision of the best services possible for those who have the least money first; not by sound-biting newsworthy diktats to the financial leviathans for whom God is profit first and the interests of the very customers who keep them there come a distant second.