Tag: Politicians

Any Fool Can Be a Politician

But it will take something very special to clear up the mess they’ve created

I recently heard it said that politicians are all psychopaths. It may have been in the script of some comedy-based show or drama I was watching. But the sentiment and what it reminded me of from my own experience of being in politics and working with many different politicians really struck home.

Whilst we can be certain that not all politicians are psychopaths, the evidence of our own eyes certainly suggests that the Government is under the control of either psychopaths, people with psychopathic tendencies or people who certainly behave like them; for the simple reason that no matter what the messaging from government and the establishment may say, the impact and delivery of both governance and policy is not focused upon what’s good for the electorate and our communities in any kind of good or human way.

However, before running away with the conclusion that every well known name we hear on the news is a psycho, it might be a better idea to consider the reality that things are more likely to have turned to complete shit, because of the way that the politicians we have behave so badly, selfishly and inconsiderately, and because of the character flaws and traits they typically have in common between them, that are impacting what they do and therefore us, in so many different ways.

Who really wants to be a politician and why?

This is a question that we should all be asking ourselves, a lot more frequently than we do.

The answer – when we really think about this and consider the real mechanics of how the political system puts its people onto the list of candidates on our ballot papers at election time – will soon begin to reveal many of the answers, not only to this, but to many other pressing questions about the way the U.K. is being run, that we all need to know.

Before going further, I will insert the caveat, that in my own experience, many people put themselves forward to become political party candidates with what we might all agree as being the best of intentions.

But that’s as far as any default allowance should ever go.

As even the best intentions can only really be considered for what they are, once we look at each candidate and ask the question ‘The best of intentions for who?’

Who politicians really serve is also an important and very timely question. Because if the current polls and polling are to be believed, the benches of our parliament and councils up and down the UK will soon be filled with people who’ve never been politicians before.

People who have nonetheless stepped up and become candidates for some political party like Reform, armed only with what for many of them will be the sincere belief that they will be the person to break the downward trend of everything we know and once elected will get things done.

But what things will they get done? And the things they aim to achieve will be good for who?

Beliefs built without foundation quickly get blown away then replaced

Few of those who are newbies to politics realise that there is a whole new set of rules at work for anyone and everyone to follow and work with in frontline or elected politics, just as soon as they have walked through the electoral door to an electoral ‘seat’.

By newbies I mean anyone who hasn’t personally held an elected office of any kind, at any level – whether they’ve never been politically active before, been on a pathway, been a lobby journalist or even an activist or commentator of some kind who has racked up millions of likes and followers on YouTube, because their words connect with people in some way.

If any candidate ‘won’ a ‘seat’ by being on a party ticket – no matter which party ticket they aligned their name with to get there, they will be on their own, rejected and probably on their way straight back out of the door, if they don’t do whatever they are told and say yes to whoever seems to be running things, whether they agree with it or not, from the moment the euphoria of ‘their’ election has died down.

Yes, finding common ground with other newbies and giving themselves a group voice can and will give them influence over some things.

But those things won’t be anything that will really change the things that really need to be changed in the way most entrants to politics sincerely intended, before they walked through the ‘elected’ door.

Most newbies, if not all, will find themselves facing a rather stark and deflating reality. That they have the choice of becoming part of the machine. Or at best to annoy their so-called political colleagues by attempting to do what is actually the right thing for the people who elected them and use their own voice – as they were elected to do so. Leaving them with very little they can do, when as a public representative, they should have been able to do so much.

The choice is rarely one that’s thought through consciously by those who have ‘arrived’. And that’s where many of the real problems with this mess of a political system begin.

Politics today is addictive for those foolish enough to believe the spin

Do ask yourself how many elected politicians you see, at any level, who resign the party whip at any point in a council or parliamentary term, and don’t immediately ‘walk the floor’ to join another party.

The reality is that very few do. And of those that do, most will have themselves been pushed out or in all likelihood found themselves questioning the whole purpose of politics; the electoral system and what being there or being part of it is really for – once they have seen the truth of how things really work.

The people who stay or try to move to another party, aren’t people who are there to represent you or I.

Being ‘in it to win it’, ‘staying in the tent’, or anything along those lines is a self serving myth that gives unscrupulous and ambitious politicians the excuse that they are ‘keeping their powder dry’ until it’s the right time – or rather when they get to the top. By which time they will of course no longer recognise any such need.

We have a party political and electoral system that guarantees the top-down functionality that minimises our influence

Politics in the UK isn’t the place for people who have the skills, experience and ability to change the things that need to be changed in this Country, today.

The party and electoral system that we have currently combine to ensure we either don’t get the right people in the majority of elected roles. Or that they are rejected by the party that put them there when there is even the smallest hint that we do.

The reality that any politician joining parliament, a council or entering any elected government role faces, is that the only politicians who are making meaningful decisions – or getting in the way of those that could stop people being harmed in some way, are those who are right at the very top of the top-down hierarchy that keeps them insulated from what people like you and me need.

Some truths about U.K. politics and our Electoral system, today

We say we have a democracy in the UK. Many believe that we do.

But we don’t choose the candidates on a ballot paper that we choose from.

We don’t choose the politicians who take key jobs in councils, in parliament or those who become mayors.

When we’ve voted and the votes have been counted, that’s the last moment that anything we have to say about anything will count or have meaning for anyone. Right up until the moment that the next election is called.

The system works and is controlled by the political parties who are all running in very similar ways to each other, by people with the same motives and same wishes to make it big in politics and be seen to be ‘the one’ who is in charge.

The only people who become political candidates, get elected, then stay, acquiesce, take part and contribute to what is a supposedly democratic form of government today by doing exactly whatever they are told, are yes men and yes women.

People who do and can only do well because they are on message and turn a blind eye to the needs of the people who put them there.

These people aren’t leaders or capable of leadership.

They are fools who live in fear of losing the roles that once elected they quickly perceive as being rightfully theirs.

All the time they are blind and deaf to the true responsibilities of what being a public representative demands them to be.

A downward system that takes everything downward as it keeps going down

The so-called leaders that we believe we currently have are just the latest incumbents on an intergenerational chain of weak, yes-men/yes-women politicians who have continuously said yes until they have found themselves right at the top.

Yet they can only maintain the pretence of leadership by saying yes to any advisor or specialist who tells them what to do, because they are not used to saying, meaning and being prepared to risk everything for themselves by putting those they represent first by saying no.

These people should never possess the power and responsibility they have, as they continually harm others by obsessively running from anything they believe will cause harm to themselves and the roles they now have.

This is not how leadership works. This is not how real change gets done.

These people are out of their depth. They have little or no view of real life or how the world works beyond their own perspective.

The politicians we have today have typically been corrupted by the power and influence that comes from having a role where they confuse having a microphone or camera rammed in their face, from the moment they are elected, as being only because they have been elected. Rather than it being because they are just the latest person to have been elected by voters or appointed by their political piers to carry out a particular role which commands public and media interest, no matter who they are.

Control, feeling in control, being seen to be in control, demonstrating that they are in control. These are the only things that are important to the would-be leaders we have in politics who cannot lead even themselves in any way.

Everyone and everything are a risk or threat to their position, once they reach the top.

So, they surround themselves with politicians who are even weaker and more inept or incompetent than they are.

The even weaker versions of themselves take over from them when their moment in the sun is done.

Then the process of replacing the weak with the even weaker begins all over again.

Fear and Power are a very dangerous mix

These politicians are people just like you and me.

But instead of being different in the ways that their position would make many of us expect, they are fearful in ways that everyday people fail to understand.

The level of fear of loss today’s political class have for themselves also makes them vulnerable to the whims and influence of those they look up to.

Much like an orphan meeting the parent that they never believed it possible to have, being certain that they will be protected in ways that will make them invulnerable against anything bad that they feel might otherwise lay in store.

The reality of our ‘leaders’

Some of those who have stepped into politics and made it to the political equivalent of the C suite without being rejected, spat out, sidelined or becoming victim to the many temptations that befall so many who have found themselves in these positions, and fallen into the trap of believing it was something special about themselves, began the process by being genuine in their desire to do something good.

However, this certainly wasn’t the case with them all.

There are many who have ended up on this gravy train, that has made life so intolerably bad for people who we all pass by in the streets each and every day, for no better reason than they wanted the job and the glory they believed it would give them. Probably from an early age.

But they also had no concept of what political influence can and should enable good public representatives to do.

They therefore have no passion for the responsibility they have and they lack the talent, skill and ability that responsibility to others also requires; that politics done for all the right reason inevitably always involves.

People who could be good politicians and have the selflessness and sense of public service that change requires, are either put off by what they discern as being no better than a circus of egos. Or they soon find out once they have stepped inside the system, that politics in the UK is no better than a fun house at a run-down traveling fair creating irreparable damage to every bit of ground it stands on.

The people who enter and stay in politics today and the people who really think they and only they can make the difference that none of the people they have watched on TV have managed so far, are the fools that have made the UK political system a fool’s paradise where those within believe that they really do know better than anyone else, and that their actions have no real life consequences for us all, beyond the immediate focus of whatever they have been led to believe they are doing.

The truth is that anyone who can say yes, look and sound the part, and not think twice to do whatever is demanded of them, to gain whatever they have been promised as the reward, will fit right into the political machine that exists in the UK today.

The political party or apparent political leaning of whatever the group or movement out in front of everyone else might be called doesn’t matter in any way.

The people who thrive in this system, at the cost of everyone they are supposed to represent, are fundamentally the same.

Uk Politics today is a game for fools, run by fools, that benefits only fools, and treats everyone outside of politics as if they are the fools.

We are all suffering now, as the direct result.

We Need a New Constitution for The United Kingdom
Politicians are more interested in who owns a policy and rubbishing those they don’t than any outcome that will benefit us
Playing on Fears: The self-fulfilling prophecies of today’s False Prophets will be the worst outcome from everything that’s already wrong
When the smallest truth becomes the biggest lie and we become the collateral damage sandwiched in between
Officially NONE OF THE ABOVE | Full Text
The Grassroots Manifesto | Full Text
Manifesto for a Good Dictator | Full Text
The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government | Full Text
Our Local Future | FULL TEXT
Any Fool Can Be A Politician PDF_Vers1_7Oct25 NPDownload

When the smallest truth becomes the biggest lie and we become the collateral damage sandwiched in between

Any good salesman or marketing specialist knows and understands that the critical element to any successful campaign is the inclusion of a truth that has the power to eclipse all the other factors that may otherwise create red flags or food for thought that the more discerning buyer will certainly want time to think about.

It doesn’t matter what the truth is and how extraordinarily small it might be. The truth they use only has to be the one that reaches in where other truths cannot, so that it can create emotional buy-in that can overcome logic, whilst painting a very clear picture of a highly desirable outcome that the audience simply must have.

Whilst it will be much easier to relate this process to something like buying a car and what must be acknowledged as the marketing brilliance which has resulted in perhaps millions of us parting with our cash or more likely getting credit to secure the new car that we felt we must have, the reality is that the dynamics of this selling equation and the creation of buy-in is something that actually plagues us all across every area of our lives too.

Before anything else, it is important to recognise that the truth; what the truth is to us; what the truth is to everyone;and then what the genuine, real or absolute truth is, beyond that, can all be very different things. Whilst at the same time for each of us as individuals, any of these can seem very real – and therefore very true indeed.

Truth at the personal level often becomes synonymous with what the individual considers to be right or correct.

What is right can for any of us can in turn be as simple as a desirable outcome that answers the question, solves the problem or breaks down the barrier that the individual or a group of them together have in mind.

Of course, the greatest salesman or marketer knows that the biggest pay days will inevitably come from creating a question to answer, the solution to a problem or a bulldozer to blitz a barrier that the buyer didn’t even realise or know was actually there and needing to be addressed in the first place – but suddenly became a life-changing necessity, in the very same moment that they found out all about it – with the help of their narrative or advert.

The story or stories and the role that created ‘need’ has played in so much and with such wild implications throughout the ages of commercialism, media channels and now the digital world, are certainly something that we should all deeply consider.

However, it is the role of these forms of deliberate manipulation that have and are increasingly being used to sway public opinion – both by those within and against the establishment – that should concern us most and they have enormous potential to harm everyone and push everything into a new type of world, created on fearful beliefs, where there is no way for anyone to step back.

Ironically, the establishment know that the real truth about most things in life, isn’t all that attractive to normal people.

Dangling carrots and carefully crafted stories of greener grass that suggest an easy grab or on open gate if you do or buy whatever they say will inevitably seem much more attractive to the alternative. Which at immediate glance may appear gloomy, require effort, or a leap of faith in some way.

The number of policies, products and outcomes that have been sold to generations of us in this way – whether that be together, in groups or as individuals, is mind boggling.

Yet it’s not just the establishment and their pet politicians who manipulate and yes – brain wash us in this way.

With the media age has come the phenomenon which is the influencer. Meaning that even the most vacuous of speakers can win over the captive audience, which is you or I, from the screen that’s right in front of us. Just because they have said or done something or belonged to something that we like; they are already popular and followed by ‘our group’; or we have just decided that we like them and therefore want to listen to or watch them – as this somehow brings them and more of what we like straight into our lives.

Contrary to the generally accepted view, influencers aren’t just beautiful people or the people who entertain and ‘connect’ with us from the digital universe.

Influencers are politicians, commentators, journalists and all the would-be politicians and people who have designs on being the next Prime Minister of the UK or President of the Universe too.

It is also not uncommon for accidental influencers to hit the sweet spot of a message that plays to someone or some groups ‘truth’ too. As the example of a tweet that I saw just this morning demonstrates rather well, where someone I have never heard of has flagged a government contract award for contingency planning as something needing to be questioned. It was then picked up and run with by others as an ‘obvious’ sign that there are plans afoot for dealing with future events that indicate a government engaging in forward planning must mean that it has already planned something very sinister for us all.

The ‘truth’ for some, in this particular instance, has quickly pole-vaulted straight over the reality that central government, local government and many of the statutory organisations paid for by the taxpayer, that we see and experience in our lives each and every day, have to make plans for managing all sorts of eventualities. Just in case the worst events imaginable but nonetheless feasible should suddenly come into view.

The problem here, which illustrates the situation well, is that although this is a very specific suggested plan on the part of those tweeting and interpreting the information this way, what they are referring to is indeed a fixed government plan. And the fact that the government are indeed planning ahead for an operation or activity that could fit a range of different possibilities, that could of course include the one suggested, does nonetheless create the presence of truth – no matter how partial, fractional or ultimately inaccurate it may or may not turn out to be.

Whilst I tackled the topic of the dangers from self-fulfilling prophecies and todays false prophets a few days ago, the agents of change and however they got into that position are not themselves the message, answer, nor the outcome they might either suggest or lead so many of us to conclude.

The problem that we now have with messaging and narratives is that our castles of reality are being built upon the moving sands of weed covered fictions that look real because they are being deliberately or accidently sprinkled with expansive truths from whichever source we have decided we can trust.

That problem would be easier to tackle if this bogus reality was one that we could all agree upon and the question was as simple as shining a light on what’s really going on in every direction, which to all intents and purposes might be better labelled as being everyone’s inconvenient truths.

Unfortunately, it’s not.

With the wide and growing range of different truths that are being created and shared by different sources in every direction that we now look, the biggest challenge that anyone or rather that we all face, if we want to get back to being adults and tackling the real issues that need to be solved so that its ok for us all to relax and genuinely enjoy life, is that solving the problem of just one mistruth doesn’t solve any problem at all. Because there is an equally truthful take on the problem or answer walking up the algorithmic pathway right behind the one that is already knocking on our information gateway door.

There is an answer. But it really is an inconvenient truth that a lot of us aren’t going to like.

Playing on Fears: The self-fulfilling prophecies of today’s False Prophets will be the worst outcome from everything that’s already wrong
Actions Speak Louder than Digital Words | Full Text
The Smallest Truths become the Biggest Lies PDF_Vers1_21Aug25Download

Understanding Society’s Struggles: The Cost of Self-Interest

Crazy as it may seem, many of the problems and fears facing society as a whole are inextricably linked and propagated by us all, through a mesh of similar behaviours and actions. These are marked apart only by simple interpretation, knowledge, and the differences of public perspective that are all too often profitable for politicians and activists to retain.

One such example of this within this libertarian age is the ‘feel-good’ which comes from targeting those who most openly profit through the exploitation of others, and the apparent greed and avarice of high-level bankers and wealthy tax-dodgers has captivated ill-feeling within many.

But is it really possible for just those few to ride off the backs of many others within a society which paints itself as being considerate of all others. Or is this just the one end of a predominantly passive chain slowly strangling the UK as part of an evolving something-for-nothing and therefore self-before-all culture?

As unpalatable as it may seem, there is a distinct thread of commonality which runs from the profiteering of the hated fat-cats, through the behaviour of politicians, the influence of those promoting and making blame-based-claims, to the actions of union leaders and their seemingly strike-happy members to beyond in a way that very few would outwardly wish to knowingly associate.

The sad reality is that each and every one of the self-serving acts that we are all likely to have pursued at some point, go on to have a negative impact upon others and usually do so many times over.

At one end of the spectrum, bankers and pension fund managers sat in plush London offices think little of the impact that pressure on retailers or energy providers to raise profits will have on end users – a point which may turn out to have been very well illustrated by the horse meat scandal and the continuing issues surrounding milk prices for farmers where margins are squeezed to unsustainable levels.

A few miles down the road, ‘career’ politicians make decisions which will affect 60 Million people based upon their chances of getting re-elected or promoted, whilst the oversold age of austerity does little to deliver any real reduction in deficit but leaves the very same people paying a higher price just the same.

Meanwhile clever animations with manipulated pop-songs and actors posing as glamorous lawyers promote the resignation of any self responsibility in accidents and the idea that somebody else is always fully to blame and must therefore pay in a very easy way, whilst the prices of almost every insurance policy in the land rises as a result.

Then in the papers, public sector union barons tell us that the Government is to blame for the slashing of services up and down the Country, when it is actually the unrealistically beneficial working conditions, wages and the limitation of responsibilities they have ransomed for their members over the course of many years which have contributed most to the destruction of a once enviable system which is sadly no longer able to sustain itself.

It is indeed ironic that it is the rise of ‘rights’ for the individual in the workplace and in just about every other part of life thereafter that strangle the rights and lives of others at every turn, and then come back full circle to a point where it is the jobs of those who sought those rights in the first place which are no longer sustainable because of the costs of the legislation and conditions that those very same enhanced rights have come to impose – generally because they have long since surpassed the point of doing good.

In every case, the public and customers at large end up paying through higher prices for food, fuel, taxes, insurances, lessening standards and losses within public services which are destroying quality of life and in some cases will probably lead to deaths if they have not already done so.

The true impact of the rising cost of living itself and the growing impact it will have upon low-income families and those in middle England who end up subsidising just about every other part of life has yet to truly manifest itself. But without change in each and every part of life and the way that every one of us approaches it, what we consider to be painful now, may soon become truly horrific.

Most of us do of course read every situation we face in life in terms of how it makes us feel and how it will impact upon us personally, rather than how it will affect the others involved, irrespective of how near or how far from us through a chain of resulting reactions they may actually be.

So in the same way that the banker raises profits by indirectly pushing the price of food up by continually pushing for better margins from the retailers that they own, union bosses demand higher wages for members so that they can afford to keep ahead of cost of living rises, with the ultimate effects being pretty much the same whichever way you choose to look at it.

Getting to a point where the balance is redressed in every sense is not a journey that any of us can toy with lightly, even though it would be politically expedient for any one of the groups discussed or their libertarian or profit-hungry apologists to do so.

The complexities brought into being when people prioritise themselves or manipulate others to do the same are enormous and much easier to embrace than they are to replace. Sadly, those who have become emotionally tied only to themselves without due regard to the result of their actions upon others are caught in a spiralling trap. One which is increasingly negative and encourages the growth of the ever evolving paranoia which accompanies the concept that all problems are of someone else’s making and that others must be made to pick up the tab.

Tackling a problem which is now cultural and has become so through many years of conditioning via the self-serving leadership of successive Governments is no easy task. Fundamentally, this is a problem which does not discern between demographics or social class and is defined only by the medium in which it is applied by the individual. It has been enhanced by the perception of close proximity, delivered by ease of communication through distance and propagated by the ease of buy-in which has itself been empowered by the two-edged-sword which is the media age.

Ultimately, self awareness and therefore responsibility of the individual has to be the aim of real Government as it will prove to be far more liberating and beneficial to everyone than the fleeting benefits any impractical plot cooked up by politicians as an easy and profitable crowd-pleaser.

It is the responsibility of those who led us here and are most likely to be happy with the status quo to lead us away from it and that is where the greatest difficulty arises.

Politicians can not only make the necessary policy changes to bring about a change which is much bigger than being about policy itself; they can also lead us in a way that advertisers, union reps and bankers simply cannot or never will be able to.

The real question here is where a change of this magnitude is going to come from when it is the political system itself which is responsible and politicians themselves who attain most benefit from maintaining the status quo.

After all, it is only politicians who have a genuine and meaningful mandate who will be selfless enough to take the risks to make those long overdue changes which nobody in Government today seems willing to outwardly contemplate. And these are indeed changes that are needed as a beacon for all to demonstrate a better way of living where a thought for all on the part of one is seen for its benefits to the one as a consequence of its benefits for us all, rather than for us continuing to live a life where the self must always come first and it seems ok for us to do so.