Were Labour set up to be ‘Custodians of the Collapse’?

One of the biggest myths in politics today is the suggestion that all of the Political Parties that we have on offer have some long-standing and credible philosophy that drives them from their base.

The Conservatives have forgotten what it is to be conservative. The Liberal Democrats are idealogues whose idea of liberalism has a very undemocratic form. Reform is at best Re-Ukipping and attempting to steal every Conservative Politician. Whilst Labour has nothing in common with the workers they once so fiercely represented, whose social and economic problems they now openly resent.

Whilst a large proportion of the UK population are very angry with politicians from right across the spectrum as it stands today, we still fall into the trap of believing that anyone who has become a politician or an MP is not only up to the job but should be treated with deference. Because being elected has made them special in some way.

Sadly, the days when we could rely upon any of the politicians or public representatives having the best interests of the public at heart in all that they do are very long gone.

The Political Parties select the candidates that we find on our ballot papers, meaning that we all have at best a ‘fixed choice’. And the choices that the Political Parties themselves make today represent a downward trajectory in leadership quality that has seen poor leader after poor leader surround themselves with even poorer leaders, which then makes up the pool from whom the next choice of an even poorer leader is inevitably made.

Even the best interviewers would struggle to uncover anything genuine or authentic about any of the people who are making the decisions that affect all of our lives. Yet we maintain the habit of taking everything these people say at face value, whilst too often falling into the trap that suggests going against the common or accepted narrative makes us wrong in some way.

What are today’s ‘politicians’ really there to do?

It has been said that if the general population understood how the economy and financial system worked, there would be a revolution tomorrow.

Yet we cannot even be sure that the Prime Minister really understands what this statement could mean. Beyond what he is being advised everyday by ‘experts’ and ‘special advisors’, who themselves also have myopic views of the world and are following their own agendas in many different ways.

The ‘growth’ that politicians obsess with isn’t the same ‘growth’ that normal people would typically think.

Yes, growing’ businesses does play a very small part.

But the growth that means so much to the political classes is the expansion of GDP or Gross Domestic Product. Which we might otherwise recognise as the financial productivity of the UK over a set period of time that can be measured in some way.

Growing GDP allows politicians to hide public debt and their expenditure.

Growing GDP and what they are referring to as ‘growth’, are the only tools poor leaders know how to use to solve problems, by showing the debt and expenditure as a percentage or proportion of the ‘economy’ for whichever period of time the reference point might be.

The entire economic and financial model that exists and which politicians are now struggling to maintain can only remain functional for as long as GDP and the money in circulation grows.

Because the same global model has already stripped the UKs traditional industries and tools of production from under us making the few already fabulously rich, there is very little left that can be used as a credible excuse for printing money.

This is why politicians are importing reasons to spend and create more money, whilst they use forked tongues to tell us they are committed to solutions that don’t face the same way.

Making us poor whilst destroying every means for us to solve the problems ourselves

As GDP and the money in circulation grows, the value of the money we have and the income we are expecting goes down and down.

The rich get richer whilst the poor get poorer and the whole system depends upon increasing wealth inequality so that those who already have more can keep getting more.

GDP came into being as the economic reference point at the same time that we lost the Gold Standard, and the FIAT monetary system took over in the period around 1971.

It is no accident that this was the same unhappy chapter of our history when UK politicians pushed us towards what was then The Common Market and what we now know as The EU.

As a localised global project, the EU ‘project’ was always about money and control being progressively handed to the world’s elites, whilst an ever-grimmer shit sandwich was all that was left for me and for you.

The neoliberal orthodoxy that underpinned all of this has been applied consistently and progressively over the past 50+ years to ensure that community and national identity has evaporated, whilst small, independent businesses of every kind are no longer viable, and any form of industry, service provision or the supply of food or goods that are essential to everyday life, have been placed under the control of fewer and fewer profiteering and controlling hands.

Puppet governance

None of this would have been possible without the help and commitment of generations of politicians who have been useful idiots for those who benefit from a system that is destroying our humanity, and everything good and of real value that we know.

Those benefitting have always been very generous to politicians and public servants in ways that appeal to the materially and glory-seeking weak minded, who have become corrupted by the system and the way that everything actually works, pretty much as soon as the votes that elected them have been counted or they have that plumb job, and the soundproof doorway from the real world into the Westminster corridors has closed behind them.

They quickly conclude that they are now the all-seeing, all hearing and all-knowing gods, amongst other gods who think exactly the same.

Dead Cats and indoctrinated amnesia

People have very short memories when it comes to politics, especially when things are feeling particularly bad.

Indeed, for many it seems easy to forget just how bad the Conservatives under Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak really were.

So, it seems unfathomable that Labour could actually be picking up where the Tories left off, and that’s why things are just getting even worse, whilst it’s the Conservatives at whom Labour are pointing the finger of blame – whilst they continue doing exactly the same.

You may not believe what you are reading. And that we are not supposed to is the whole point.

There is NOTHING between any of the Political Parties that we have to choose from today. Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem or Reform.

They are all as Establishment as each other, and as things stand today will continue the pathway of UK destruction, no matter how the next government may be formed.

The reality of today’s Minimum Wage: The baseline of our Economic Crisis

The biggest elephant in this economic room and probably the reason why Kier Starmer was falling over himself over the use of the term and definition of ‘working people’, is there is a growing underclass of the population who cannot earn enough money to pay for the basic essentials that they need to live each week or month.

The ‘Minimum Wage’ – even at the £12.21 it is expected to reach in April 2025, will not meet the basic cost of living.

The Minimum Wage is not enough for a single person, living alone, to be able to meet all of their basic or essential needs and expenses, without having financial help, receiving benefits of some kind, getting support from a charity like a Food Bank, or by going into debt.

In October 2023, I calculated that the real hourly rate that a single person would need to receive for a 40-hour working week would be £14.00 per hour – and that figure will certainly have grown in the year that has passed since.

The Politicians who do know and understand this – and please be under no illusion that those at Cabinet Level really should know what it really costs to live, also know that if they were to openly and publicly recognise that the National Minimum Wage isn’t anywhere near enough for a single adult who is living alone to live on, they would then be required to act.

Acting would require an immediate uplift of the Minimum Wage to a figure that is today likely to be around £15.00 per hour.

However, whilst the truth that this economic model can only make some rich by making many poor cannot be ignored, the imposition of a genuine Minimum Wage overnight would have immediate knock-on effects for everything and effectively bring the entire economy to a halt. For no better reason than the economic model that we currently have can only exist and function by exploiting people in this way.

When asked, most people who understand how business and money works will recognise that there is something very wrong with the way this economic model works. But will inevitably return to the response ‘It’s just the way it is’ and ‘Nothing can be done about it’.

This false position of inevitability or that it is impossible to change would be fine, were it not the fact that the people taking this position are typically not those being affected by it.

Will Farmers advocates, membership representatives and activists make Inheritance Tax the hill that the future of U.K. Food Security dies on?

Uncomfortable to read as it may be, the well-known membership and advocacy organisations that supposedly enjoy ‘real’ influence on government and the other layers of ‘The Food Chain Onion’, and purportedly represent their members interests before anything else, are actually just players in an establishment game.

The officers and leaders amongst them value the access or relationships that they have with government departments, politicians and representatives above everything and to a level where they will not do anything that will risk those relationships.

When the wishes of the advocacy and membership organisations are aligned with what the government of the time is doing, we can be sure that industry representatives will walk away with what appear to be some great wins.

Just as they will appear to do so when the aims aren’t aligned and the politicians will make some sort of concession so that they can misrepresent and link to other issues that they will not rescind on.

This may regrettably yet prove to be the case with Inheritance Tax and linking it to UK Food Security. Just so that a narrative can be created that the UK Food Security issue has been solved with the intent that it heaps together all the issues Politicians and Government Departments don’t want to deal with, and builds the spurious narrative that ‘The Food Security problem is now solved’.

Although we can all be sure that representatives of these Organisations make very reasoned representations to those they meet and communicate with, they also take any reassurances and promises they obtain at face value.

They regrettably fall back on the way of thinking that ‘It’s just the way it is’ and that it is better and more beneficial to be ‘in the tent’ than to do anything that would risk their position, and might stop them from being allowed back in. As many smaller less well known organisations will have tried to their cost.

Advocacy isn’t working and isn’t going to work, because you cannot reason with those who are unreasonable

In many cases without even understanding why they are being unreasonable, our politicians and the officers and public sector representatives that surround them only see reason in doing and pursuing the public policies and actions that they believe to be best for everyone, whilst actually only doing what’s best for them.

Populist ‘activism’ and their current approaches

In the case of activist ‘organisation’ No Farmers No Food, whose yellow branding with the black silhouette tractor is capturing support, they are certainly well-meaning and led by good intention.

However, like the advocacy and membership organisations that are in The Food Chain mix, they are also missing the point that the best people to solve the problem aren’t the same ones that caused it.

And the problem we are all facing is much bigger than lots of talking and protesting about whatever gets traction in the media and appears to stick.

The priority of UK Politics today simply isn’t UK Farming and Food Security

In respect of Government and the Politicians we are dealing with, the faces and the branding might have changed in July. But the motives and the direction that drives them is very much the same as those who were in Power before.

As I write and publish in November 2024, there is nobody and no political movement or party out there in the Public realm that has the ability, system-wide understanding or the properly reasoned intent to tackle and change any of the problems we face, when the next General Election in the UK comes. Whether its within months OR in 5 years’ time.

This is a very serious problem for us all.

Understanding Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future –Everything You Need to Know

The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text

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Food From Farms Guaranteed_PDF_Vers2_13Mar25 Download

Farmers Advocates and IHT 18Nov24 PDF_Vers1_26Nov25 Download

It’s the question of safeguards over Assisted Dying that are the real problem. Not having the option of an early death as a reasoned voluntary choice

It’s over a decade since I last wrote about the need for Assisted Dying to be legalised.

I don’t even want to look into the number of terminally ill and people who have faced life changing challenges in that time, who have not been able to choose an early exit, just in the UK.

If we can step outside of what should be the irrational fear of having no choice, We can be sure that if we were facing that very same situation ourselves, we would want the option of a painless exit at a time and place of our own choosing, surrounded by the people we love.

Sadly, as with so many of the realities of life that cause so much pain and distress because of others standing in the way, the penny doesn’t drop on issues like this unless you’ve known some one very close who has gone through it, or you’ve ‘had a whiff of the box’ yourself and have found out.

What makes the whole debate all the more frustrating is the reality that very few of us would disagree that it is not the principle of Assisted Dying or Assisted Suicide that are really what the rejections are really about.

The problem, as it was when I last wrote about it, and for as long and wherever this debate raises its head, is that there is no, or rather there appears to be no foolproof method of ensuring that Assisted Dying is and can only ever be 100% voluntary.

Indeed, few would disagree that the circumstances and legal framework should never exist that could mean that anybody – and particularly older people, the infirm, disabled of those who are vulnerable in any way, could ever be compelled to make such a choice, for the benefit of others, rather than only themselves.

Regrettably, it is a sign of the times that so many of us have sympathy for the suggestion that there is no way to create adequate protections and safeguards that cannot be manipulated in some way. Because we live in times where morality and ethics have been deliberately confused with regulation, laws and rules that may be ‘legal’, but are no longer fit for purpose within a legal system that isn’t serving us with the unquestionable impartially that it should.

However, such arguments and positions do miss the obvious point that saying no to legalising Assisted Dying without even contributing to the search for a workable solution, because of what might happen, should not be nearly as compelling as the fact we are failing people who are already living with the personal hell of this experience and are crying out for our humanity and help.

Whilst it can only be good that Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is heading for a vote, the truth is that whilst the intention cannot be questioned, this whole question should always have been a government driven process rather than being left to be a private members bill, because the leaders wont lead when anything this controversial is in the public policy mix.

Had this Bill had effective cabinet level or prime ministerial leadership and the departmental resources that really should be applied to any matter with implications of this kind, the breadth and depth of the practical options and the governance that would support a successful outcome could really have been exhausted in a comprehensive process and debate.

Instead, we run the risk that either the Bill will fall and the question will not again return until at least the next Parliament.

If it should succeed, there will also be the risk that the necessary safeguards will not be in place and that cases will follow where questions could be raised over whether people are or have been effectively bullied into choosing an early death. Worse, that the gates are opened to wider forms of abuse that we should not even have to consider being possible in what we believe to be the civilised 21^st century society we are in.

Assisted Dying is an ethical, moral issue and cause that sits way beyond party politics. Because the outcome has the ability to affect each and every one of us in exactly the same way.

As such, it is deserving of being considered, researched and thought through with the significance that it truly deserves.

The threat to UK Farming, Our Food Security and Food Production: Either deliberate intent or outright stupidity is destroying our own ability to feed and support British People

Whilst I have been focusing on public policy issues across the whole spectrum of politics, government, charity and business, the one issue that concerns me more than any other is the question of UK Food Security.

My concern led me to study a Postgraduate Course at the Royal Agricultural University in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security. But doing so just raised many more questions about the seriousness and the UKs vulnerability to a very broad set of issues, which even some of our best academics have a myopic view of and still believe – like many farmers – that the answers and solutions will come from politicians and an establishment, that are responsible for the mess that we are already in.

I write books, publish blogs and make videos which cover these issues. Yes, I discuss the problems, but I also focus on solutions too – and this is where there is little or no helpful discussion taking place – and where the unavoidable revolution in UK Farming, Food Production, Food Security and the relationship between British People and our Food Supply must surely begin.

My Amazon Bookshelf can be found by following THIS LINK.

You may also find my website Our Local Future interesting to explore too.