Tag: profit

Profiteering is alive, well and adding to people’s financial misery every day. It’s just hiding in plain sight

Right now, there is a cost-of-living crisis underway. You may well be one of those fortunate enough to have only been upset by the rising costs, rather than one of the growing number now going short.

But the misery for many is real. It is happening around us all today.

Sadly, this cost-of-living crisis, the inflation and the shortages contributing to it are going to get exponentially worse. So much worse, the cost-of-living crisis is going to contribute to a complete system collapse.

Whilst the ultimate responsibility for the responses to the events which are easy to blame for the cost-of-living crisis, such as Brexit, Covid and the War in Ukraine lie firmly at the feet of our politicians, there are other purely greed-driven influences at work too. Private interests that are exploiting the ineptitude and ignorance in government, to line their own pockets.

Profiteering, cynically hidden in plain sight, is helping to make what would always have been a very challenging time for many, a looming disaster that is going to affect us all.

Privately owned and corporate businesses, many of whom are some of the worst for putting out messages that tell us they are doing all they cant to help us and that they are the victims of price rises and shortages themselves, are the very worst when it comes to making massive profits on the basis that people will accept the rises because of Brexit, Covid or Ukraine, when what the real price inflation and what they are exploiting our good will to charge are nowhere near the same.

Everything that could has gone the way of big business, corporate interests and those who ‘know someone’ since the first Lockdown began in 2020, simply because our stupid and inept politicians have tried to deal with every single problem they were elected to solve by writing cheques.

This has led to many in the business world to believe that its ok to keep inflating prices of the goods and services they sell – being certain as they are, that government will have to step in and sure-up the price and the ability of everyone to keep on paying the bills.

Yet wholesale energy prices have come down, and so-called shortages that big retailers are using to justify the extraordinary levels of food price inflation simply don’t exist at the present time – even if they could do so very soon.

Just about every kind of product or service that each and every one of us are using every day, is shooting up in the retail price that we pay. Either that or the products we buy are being reduced in size or quality – which in real terms amounts to getting less whilst paying more.

We literally now have to buy even more of everything, just to stand still.

Yes, it is absolutely true that the very stupid people we have running the Country are responsible for creating the myth that no matter what happens, everyone will still continue to get paid.

But stupidity on the part of Government, legislators and regulators should not be a green light for businesses to keep charging more and then charge whatever they like.

Just because legislation doesn’t prevent profiteering, meaning that businesses can exploit any excuse that people will believe to do so, doesn’t make it right or necessary either.

Sadly, greed-driven, unethical businesses have been at the creative centre of the cost-of-living crisis, globalisation, and everything that has led to the situation that we now face, right from the very start. And that start wasn’t Brexit, Covid or Ukraine.

For decades, poor politicians have allowed businesses to plunder resources and exploit us all for profit and private gain.

Working within the law or regulations that exist doesn’t exclude any business or private interest from the moral and ethical responsibilities that they have to everyone and everything else. Especially when they are likely to have had the rules changed or created to allow them to do all this in the first place.

This Blog was originally published in May 2022 and then as part of the book ‘From Here to There Through Now’ in October 2022. It has been edited and updated by The Author.

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No Energy Company has the right to Guaranteed Profits #costoflivingcrisis

The story that we are repeatedly being told is that the price of wholesale energy is shooting up because of supply issues, not least of all our relationship with Russia over Ukraine.

We are told that we have to do our bit. That Ofgem has no choice but to raise the ceiling of the prices that energy companies can charge. Even though government cash handouts aren’t going to help within the much wider price rises within cost-of-living crisis context. And a ridiculous number of us are already borrowing, or going to foodbanks in the middle of summer, just so that we can have access to food.

And then we are told that the energy companies are enjoying profits that aren’t just wafer thin, but are actually obscene when put in the context that the government regulator Ofgem, is facilitating nothing less than a system that is clearly not only covering any genuine supply-side cost rises that might exist, but is also ensuring that the profits and dividends paid to the private interests that own what should be public services are being continually guaranteed.

Words cannot explain just how wrong and unjust this system and the processes that our politicians have allowed to be created and that are now punishing us all, really is.

Our politicians could stop this madness now and have the power to do so. But they won’t, because they don’t even understand how the system they are responsible for actually works.

What horrific. What terrible. What unnecessarily unjust times we are living in. Just so idiots can look good in public, create a place for themselves in Wikipedia and shout to everyone ‘don’t I look great in my elected job!’.

The Supply Chain Break-Down that’s beginning to happen right now

You might have already noticed that different things that you usually or often buy when you visit the local supermarket or shop online are unavailable for some reason.

You might not have worried too much, simply because at the time you usually shop – let’s say late on a Saturday afternoon – you have become used to some of the shelves seeming to be a bit bare. It’s been a busy day, after all, right?

For most people, the experience has been a little different. In fact, no matter when people have been shopping, certain items have increasingly been absent from the shopping list. Perhaps temporarily – with them returning. But then they have been disappearing all over again.

The reason for this is that the supply chain for some foods and some goods is already at breaking point. Like a broken car, the supply chain keeps stopping and needs to be restarted or fixed, before it will work for whoever is running it again.

The problem for governments and big business, is that both the Global and National supply chain break down is not symptomatic or just a direct result of recent global events. And it is not just about the way that they have responded – although this has actually made things much worse.

The problems with the Global Supply Chain are all about the system now crashing.

Whilst we might see it as being possible to go without an expensive bag, a new smartphone or even a brand-new car for a short time whilst someone else solves the problem – as they always do, things are going to feel very different when the shortages start affecting all the basic essentials we need to live each day, and specifically food.

No, you may not believe this is going to happen. We are all, after all, used to and we take for granted that things can continue to go as well as they have been doing. That just like the shortages that happened during the Covid Lockdowns, after a few days, the problems will just go away.

They won’t.

The problems that we are only beginning to experience with shortages aren’t going to go away.

The only similarity to the experience we had during the unnecessary Lockdowns was what happens when certain things like toilet rolls and foods like flour and eggs suddenly disappear from the shelves and other people begin to hoard more of them than they could ever need or use, because they are terrified of going without.

Welcome to a drawn-out Global Supply Chain Crash. Welcome to The Great Reset. This is just part of what all the problems we now face are going to be about.

Recycle, Reuse, Repair

We only believe that we have to continually have new things all of the time, because it has been in the interests of somebody else to create and propagate the myth that this is so.

Products of all kinds that we use daily or very often could and should last much longer than they do. In fact, they could even be repaired or renewed, if the companies that produce them didn’t have regular repeat sales – and therefore profits always first in their minds.

The process behind this is called Planned Obsolescence.

Planned Obsolescence is one of the most cynical, exploitative and unnecessary processes that industry and big business has ever designed. All with making money in mind. It’s not green or in any way environmentally friendly, and the knock-on effects over decades have been massive amounts of production that we didn’t need, that we have had to pay for and that has used inestimable levels of resources around the world, for no genuine cause.

The true cost of Globalisation

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

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

Everything is relative

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

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

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

Nobody has the right to make a profit

Nobody has the right to make a profit. They certainly do not have the right to make a profit by exploiting others, or by forcing them into arrangements that they simply cannot afford.

Yet this is the situation that exists in this Country today, simply because our MPs and Politicians – the people we have trusted to look after us – are not doing and are not up to the job.

Prices are at the highs that they are and are now rising all the time, because it is in the interests of others for them to do so.

The prices that we are being asked to pay, simply do not reflect the real – and much lower costs.

Self-interest is a powerful influence, because those who are driven to do everything that benefits themselves are more than happy to bring others into their plans so that one becomes just a few who benefit from the result.

Buy Now, Pay Later is no solution to cost-of-living crisis. It is another device that will be disastrous for the poor and the depths of greed the rich have now reached have become a menace for us all

People who lack the essentials of life – because they cannot financially afford them – are vulnerable to anyone who has a clever way to exploit that need.

It is a lesson from centuries of history that we should all be able to rely on that those who lead us will have learned. But regrettably, we cannot.

Indeed, government was created as a way for us to all collectively help others in a time of need. But the time when mechanisms such as the Welfare State and even the NHS were able to operate and fulfil their function without being exploited in some way, have sadly long since gone.

Like me, you may have noticed that so-called ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ ‘opportunities’ have started to appear and are available to cover the cost of some of the least expensive items that we have gone online and even to the high street or local shops to buy.

To those who have been fed the unscrupulous line that taking out credit and paying it off before you are charged interest is a good thing AND can do so, it is likely that just adding another way to delay paying bills with free money will be seen as no more than an added bonus. But what happens when these offers and the growing number of Buy Now, Pay Later apps are used to pay for food, travel or even energy that the people buying these goods and services don’t have the money to afford?

The willful blindness to a situation that politicians themselves have directly and indirectly created is not just a problem. It is fast becoming a damning indictment of how as a society we have become obsessed with quick money and the status that its fluidity affords us, when we believe we can afford it, whilst this obsession has picked up speed and just about enslaved us all.

The debate over whether the £200 relief on energy bills should be a Tory driven Loan or a Labour derived subsidy fails to even scratch the surface of the dreadful realities that increasing numbers of British people now face.

Food and the essentials that each of us need to survive and remain healthy each day are going up in price aggressively, whilst the value of the money we earn or are given is rapidly going down.

To add to the torment and human misery that little more than political stupidity and the greed of big business and bankers have created, the latter are now exploiting what is left for those who already have nothing left with this Buy Now, Pay Later trap.

They are doing little more than exploiting the vulnerability that accompanies need. All so they can continue to raise already bloated profit margins for themselves.

The travesty of this all, is that the money being ‘loaned’ to the people who will become debt ridden and then ostracised, by the very same commercial credit scorers who qualified them, doesn’t actually exist.

Our politicians have literally given these sadists a license to print money that they then loan out, charge interest against and simply destroy lives without any further thought, when it’s not paid back.

It’s all done as if the money was real, and they had been put at a genuinely loss and have reason to be aggrieved in some way.

This travesty is made worse, only by the reality that our Politicians either don’t understand how the perversity of this system now works, or that they do, but overlook it all on the basis that it either helps them to do so, or that it is too difficult to deal with.

To say that we are on our way to hell in a hand cart would be bad enough, if it weren’t for the fact that to say all this was avoidable for a very long time is the absolute truth.

Instead, we have politicians who are scraping around trying to fix life-changing problems for everyone by printing even more money whilst making them even worse.

Making life fair and affordable for all was always within our Politicians power.

They have either deliberately ignored the problems or are just too stupid to be aware of and face up to the true cause.

A new ‘nationalisation’ of essential Public Services is necessary to help head off the Cost-of-Living Crisis. But Public Sector reform, removal of union influence and practical reality is essential too

Any service necessary for each every one of us to function in our daily activities and continue to be an active member of society should be shielded from the constraints and bias of private interests and maintained under impartial public or community control.

Yet this is not where we are in the UK today. The problems that having so many public facing services under the direct control or heavy influence of private, profit-making interests is now impacting our lives like never before.

First things first. My reason for writing about ‘Nationalisation’ today is of course related to the energy crisis being caused by escalating prices of natural gas supplies which are being brought in from Europe and beyond.

It is important to be clear here that the price of these supplies before they reach the UK wouldn’t matter whoever is in control of utility companies across the UK.

But the fact that we are in the situation that we now are says more about the way that Government has dealt with the energy question for a long time, and how successive governments have failed us strategically over and over again.

This is where I will refocus onto the rather pressing question of who controls public energy provision in the UK and therefore the ongoing cost.

The pathway to today’s mess

Privatisation was probably the most damaging legacy of the Thatcher years. Not because the many Public Companies that were sold off didn’t need to be run better or placed in more capable hands as they most certainly did.

Privatisation was inherently damaging because that ‘Conservative’ Government failed to recognise that any shareholder-led business will always put the value of their business and what they earn from it before anything else. When handed a virtual monopoly, the owners of private ‘industries’ will ultimately dictate the prices of everything so that their margins rise and are maintained first.

Yes, a public sell-off sold to us all under the premise that we could all become owners of the services that worked for us sounded like a great plan. And it might have been, if all those shares that started off in small tranches sat in the back pockets of welders, builders and secretaries hadn’t been sold off when the promise of a quick return quickly passed them all into large corporate and deep-pocketed hands.

On the face of it, it seems extraordinary that the so-called Party of Business could not have foreseen that with the wider changes that they were facilitating and contributing at the time, this is how things would soon be.

But as we are learning to our continuing and significant cost, foresight and thought for the impact of decisions and what will then happen when the chain of subsequent decisions are six or seven times

removed are in short supply when our current crop of politicians are involved.

The reality today is that the energy sector doesn’t exist to provide us all with light, heat, electricity with the purpose of serving the public in the best ways that it can.

The UK energy sector today exists to provide dividends and profit to shareholders with a level of power and influence that our politicians gave it, which guarantees that it can.

The fact that private interests can command profit levels which leave parents, families and people both old and young who live on their own, rationing their power and heat, is an absolute travesty.

With all the related personal harms that follow, such as anxiety, social issues, food poverty (where heat and power is prioritised), it is incredible that any government – Conservative, Labour or anything else – wouldn’t see and prioritise addressing this matter as a No.1 cause.

Re-Nationalisation & Cultural Reform of the Public Sector

But here we are.

We have to consider the other questions around returning to public ownership and the provision of energy in the UK today and tomorrow first.

The Labour Party is talking about Nationalisation again. And in terms of the principle of returning public services to public or community-focused ownership, I would certainly have to agree.

However, what would be as bad, if not worse than what we have and what people are experiencing today, would be for all of these companies, industries and sectors just to be returned to a situation where civil servants and union barons have control.

With the public sector in desperate need from the sclerotic, protectionist environment and culture that it now is, the last thing the UK public would need is for energy to be under the control of people who hide behind their job titles to excuse their ineptitude by being ‘public servants’. It is an entire sector living in fear of wokeism and everything that could lose them their comfortable salaries and pensions.

As such you can be certain that these re-nationalised services handed back to the Public Sector as it is would immediately capitulate to union control.

Let’s be quite fair about Unions. There was a time when they provided a great service to the low paid and to mistreated employees. The Union Movement certainly precipitated and even facilitated great and positive change.

But that was a Century ago, and with even a fraction of the rules and regulations around employment that now exist, Unions have long since become an archaic device that does nothing more than further the self interest of a few by pushing damaging industrial action. And just like with the banks and big company fat cats, it is the general public that ends up paying the inevitable price.

So whatever model of Nationalisation that were undertaken, it would be essential that public sector reform and the removal of union influence be right at the top of the policy change list, and that is where some of the biggest political controversies lie. Or at least they do at the current time.

The model would most certainly not work if it was anything near to being like the publicly owned model of service companies from the 1970’s and before. But there are ways that a good operational model that priorities service to the public first can be achieved and run on very commercial lines. Just as long as the governance and the people who are able to influence those systems of government are the right people with the right values to do that job.

Energy Provision must be practical today with idealism helping us do things better for tomorrow

Going around in what feels like a bit of a circle, we now come back to the issue at hand today.

Beyond the immediacy of the impending ‘energy crisis’ itself, the issue is UK energy self-sufficiency; How we maintain that self-sufficiency and how we meet the fluctuations of domestic and business demands night and day, seven days a week and 365 days of the year.

Right now, the UK isn’t achieving this. That is why small energy companies are going bust as they cannot supply energy to customers at the prices they have committed themselves to.

It’s why the monopolistic members of this exclusive utility club are piling pressure on Ofgem and the Government to be unleashed from the restraints of price caps that will allow them to charge whatever it costs them to buy wholesale energy – whilst maintaining or continuing to grow profits and dividend payments that will just extend the unnecessary and avoidable pain that is steadily affecting the lives of us all.

Whilst we have to wake up to the risk to us all that climate change has created, and accept that the ideas, habits and thinking behind them now have to change, we cannot allow impractical idealism rule over the process if we want to achieve aimed for result, without causing a lot more harm and pain.

Green Energy is expensive to the public, because it isn’t as efficient, reliable and doesn’t offer providers the same kind of returns as traditional sources of energy with technology and management in its current form.

Making Public Policy commitments and setting timelines to phase out technology that works now, is proven and is reliable on the basis of alternatives that are unproven, not evolved to a workable degree or haven’t even been developed yet is government and political foolishness in the extreme.

It is incredible that power stations have already been decommissioned that could have now still been in use. And before anyone one starts to argue about the need to stop using fossil fuels for this purpose – which most will readily agree must happen as soon as we can provide alternatives consistently that make sense to do so – please take a good look at what China and other Countries with significantly higher carbon footprints are doing right now.

One of those alternatives, at least for a realistic and continuing period of time, has to be a greater reliance on our own UK Nuclear Power production and the development of smaller reactors that may be easier to commission and put into service, making energy production localised as quickly as possible once more.

We are not safe from foreign or malign interest of any kind for as long as these services that are essential to our lives remain out of public hands.

It should now be the priority of government run by whoever in power it might be, to return the UK to full self sufficiency of energy production in whatever form necessary to achieve this in the shortest time.

Once we our energy self-sufficient and only when we are, the priority must then be to promote the development of the greenest alternatives possible, ensuring that they are always available, are reliable and that they make being green a voluntary and easy choice, rather than one which is imposed by law or default.

Nobody else will ever compensate the loss of a good or viable business in circumstances out of the owner’s control. A Government that champions itself as the party of business should know better

img_5431Watching events as they are unfolding is painful, especially when you know they are avoidable and that our decision makers have alternative choices. It has prompted me to write passionately over recent days about how our politicians should be mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 shutdown.

The ‘help’ that the Government is giving people is not only piecemeal – leaving holes for many that it is supposed to be helping, but for EVERYONE and specifically the people who need help that the response to the shutdown doesn’t reach, what the Government is doing doesn’t go anywhere near far enough.

Everyone has something to say about all of this – especially those who have a platform on social media, in the press or on TV.

But the problem with the ‘profiled’ speakers who have been allowed to become too influential (Sadly there are too many to mention), and with it too fond of their own voices, is that the words they are giving us are usually little more than subjective opinion. What they pump out to every ear that will hear them is not based on experience or even getting out there and talking to real people, but how they look at the world and how they think things should be. It is based purely on the scope of the very narrow lens through which they see their own life.

Whatever our experiences of life up until we found ourselves at this point, we are all afraid. But we are afraid for different reasons.

My fear is not about catching Coronavirus and what it could do to me – as I’ve done the life-threatening illness thing before. It’s how the response to the Crisis is creating many more problems than it is going to solve, and that if we are together going to be able to make the best of the opportunities and positives that we have ahead of us once the critical stage of this Crisis is over, we do not have the right people leading us to make that either a practical or tangible option for us all.

The people I am most afraid for as I am writing this today, are the self-employed and the owners of small businesses who are likely to be sat somewhere right now on the verge of crying. Many are facing up to the stark reality that on one hand they have been stopped from trading for what in principle if nothing else is a good reason, but on the other they have had their ability to service bills, pay back debt and survive taken away from them without any bad decision on their part. This isn’t the result of something they have done, or could have planned for and there has been no opportunity for choice on their part.

What they are now experiencing is not happening in isolation. Many people will be affected by a chain of events that will start with them and cascade throughout our economy reaching every sector and every level of the supply chain.

People who work for them will lose their jobs. Suppliers and Service Providers will not have their bills paid. Customers will lose shops, their local tradesman and local services of all kinds that are not supplied by big business – because big business cannot offer the level of service and make the margins that their shareholders demand by offering customer experiences of this kind – whereas all these committed small business owners and self-employed people before Coronavirus did so willingly and by choice to build relationships with their customers and differentiate from the profit-led Corporate behemoths.

For those who have already lost or now stand to lose what was only weeks ago a good and viable business, no form of compensation will make up for the consequences of that loss, which will hit them very hard – especially when the responsibility for the loss sits squarely with our Government and the choices it has made.

From late 2010 I experienced what it was like to be in a very similar situation when the successful business I had set up and run for nearly 7 years had a key contract pulled from under me, simply because of changes to my customer’s marketplace. It was in no way related to the quality and value of the service I delivered.

Even though I had anticipated changes might come to the industry and I had negotiated clauses within our contract to make sure everyone would get paid and I would be left with enough to start again, I never anticipated that when it came down to it, a high profile customer like mine would refuse to pay a £six-figure final bill, simply because the legal system is such that it knew it could and would get away with it.

I was dropped completely, well and truly in the shit. Not because it was the conscious aim of the managers and lawyers responsible to get up and screw me, the people who worked for me and the people who supplied me that day. They did it, because the world we live in tells us we don’t have to think about the impact of what appears a sound business decision and has no downside or consequences for anyone else.

This is the kind of limited, self-serving and blinkered thinking that the Government is employing right now.

After months of fighting, I put my Company into Administration, not because I wanted to or felt it an easy way out. I did so because I simply didn’t have any other choice.

It’s because I’ve been in that situation that I can say openly that for many, that’s where the real problems begin.

Self-employment or owning and running a business is different for everyone and for different reasons we all find ourselves with the ability to contribute different things to what we do.

For some of those who are facing down the reality that the money the Chancellor has allocated won’t go far enough or won’t arrive soon enough, they will at least not have tied themselves into loans, leases or contractual arrangements of any kind to support their business.

The lucky ones -may have their day-to-day needs met fully.

But it’s more likely they will be met only in part by the money that the Chancellor has allocated to the self-employed.

All of the domestic bills like the rent, mortgage, phone and everything else still have to be paid.

But the people most likely to be able to manage on being given what is pretty much the average wage are the ones who are most likely walk away with a skill or trade still behind them that is always in demand by others. Put simply, if they’ve worked for themselves and had problems, it simply won’t be thought about.

However, as you scale up and away from the domestic bills that you may already be feeling left high and dry with when it comes to paying, for the self-employed who are directors, partners and company owners, there are further levels of commitment to meet and the reality they are facing is simply not the same.

Vehicles, Premises, Licenses, Fuel, Tools, Insurances, Loans, Vehicle Tax, Mortgages, Professional Fees, Bank Fees and plenty of other things need to be paid for – even if a business is standing still. So giving anyone what is the maximum of the average monthly wage who own and runs a business – if they qualify – is far from being a good start if the aim is to stop business falling over when you have told them to stop trading.

The people who own, run and set up small businesses without third party investor funding form the backbone of our business-based economy. They are the entrepreneurs and the people taking the real risks and there is a lot more to it than the tax status of being ‘self-employed’.

They are people who have really done something on their own who shouldn’t be treated like social pariahs or like they don’t exist when their business ‘fails’.

Beyond the financial hardship and turmoil that the Government is condemning them to face, there is a very harsh reality of how people in this Country judge what they inevitably assume to be failure, and in particular where the incorrectly but nonetheless interchangeable terms bankruptcy and administration are concerned.

Instead of looking further and more closely at the reality of why people may have found themselves dealing with the horrific process of managing their own bankruptcy or putting a company they own into administration, there is an immediate default assumption of wrongdoing on the part of those looking on, rather than even the merest hint of appreciation for the value of the experience and the lessons that will inevitably been learned.

Some businesses fold in ‘normal times’ because of stupidity or more likely because the person driving it is out of their depth and in a field they don’t understand. But for just as many if not many more, the reasons that have brought them to that place are simply out of their control.

These are people who would actually be an asset to any business because of their experience of dealing with these problems. Instead business all too often views them as being a risk and if there isn’t change in the way society looks upon the realities of business closure and what caused them, many brilliant people of exceptional understanding and talent will quickly join the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

It is not too late right now for the Chancellor and the Government to take a leap backwards, for them to review and restart the package of measures they are putting in place and this time get it all right from the start. I for one would certainly think it big of them if they do.

But as the days of this shutdown become weeks and the weeks then become months, good businesses and employers that were viable only days ago will be forced to close with companies going into administration and the owners declaring themselves bankrupt. Not voluntarily or because they didn’t know how to run their business. But because a Conservative Government didn’t understand the realities and consequences of the decisions it made in a crisis and wouldn’t consider the alternative choice.

Nobody in the supply chain of business, industry, services, property or anything else will lose out during a standstill, IF the flow of money throughout that chain is held up at every stage. Not just at the start.

Politics, political leanings and tribalism don’t count here. It’s simply about doing what is right.

The only way that EVERYONE who has lost their income as a result of the Shutdown can be treated fairly, whilst not being condemned to suffer or lose their livelihood too, is for the Government to stop ALL bill payments to ALL creditors, ALL interest payments and the accumulation of debt for EVERYONE – until such time as the Shutdown is over and EVERYONE has been able to return to work.

To not do so when it is a clear option shows an absurd level of inability on the part of Politicians to step out of their own shoes to taste and feel the reality of how the decisions they are making are going to manifest in our lives.

If businesses of the type, size and number that will be left to fail because the Government hasn’t taken steps to treat EVERYONE fairly, and above all THE SAME, the British economy is going to fall over a cliff in a way that will never allow business to operate in the same ways again.

What would be good to see right now is the politicians that we have elected doing the right thing and making the right choice. We are now in very different times, and if they do not do so, people will suffer the impacts of the choices that they have made for a long time to come.

When this Government falls or we have new Elections, the Electorate will not be forgiving.

The majority of the victims from the Coronavirus will not be the people who have died or have been personally touched by grief as a result of the illness it causes. Most will be created by the missed opportunities, poor decisions and the failure to act equitably on the part of politicians driving an avoidable tragedy for us all that would not have been necessary if the Government had thought differently and made an alternative choice.

To those reading this blog who may be staring down the barrel of the business closure gun, I sincerely hope that the Chancellor will have a lucid moment, grow a pair and reconsider his choice.

Please hang in there as long as you feel that you can do so, because we have to hope that this episode will be shorter than we all quietly suspect that it will be, and that the shortness of time will therefore make closure something you can avoid.

If it doesn’t, please be assured that there are many of us out here who care. Closing down your business will be tough for many reasons that days ago you would never have even dreamed of. But it will be easier for you to deal with and recover from if you are honest with yourself about what you can and should do, and take all the steps you can to see the process through in the right way.

I believe that the experience that we are all now commonly sharing is going to change the way that most of us view the World. The communities we live in, the businesses we work in, the people we interact with and how we interact with them are all going to change as a result.

I am hopeful that when we come out of the other side of this, we will all consider the impact of the way we think about other people and the way that we then treat them and we will all be open to an appreciation of the different circumstances people find themselves in, that they may not be responsible for and were never there by choice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ALL need bills & interest put on hold and enough money to eat and be clean. Government bullshit about Subsidies, Loans and Grants helping us now or in the long term is simply f**ktarded

It doesn’t matter if it’s electricity, gas, water, credit card, a loan, a lease, rent, a mortgage, phone, broadband, TV streaming, contract subscriptions of any other kind, or anything else. It is the ceaseless demands of the private, profit-making interests in this Country being allowed to continue sucking money from our pockets that is the real problem people are facing now and will continue to do so long after Coronavirus has been put in its place.

Subsidies, Loans and Grants from the Government make great headlines when politicians are obsessed with how things look. But these hollow actions are giving legitimacy to the continuance of profiteering and endless money making on the part of commercial interests and what we have come to know as ‘the few’. All at a time when there is no longer any excuse for the people we elected to provide opportunities for the usual suspects to carry on making money at our expense, whilst we cannot earn, and as if they are entitled to act, behave and continue doing so like gods.

By allowing the economy to unravel, pretending it can be propped up by giving people the means to pay bills that could otherwise be put on hold so that everyone is in the same position, whilst pushing many people and businesses into what will quickly become unserviceable debt, the Government is initiating a downward spiral for this Country and what should be a robust economy.

The outcomes of this political ineptitude will be far worse for real people and for businesses over the long term than the outcome from the temporary hit that the Government should be taking on our behalf right now.

The pathway that the Chancellor has taken so far indicates that the Johnson Government is either incompetent and doesn’t understand the reality that people like small business owners, Deliveroo riders, people on zero hours contracts and those simply laid off from jobs in cafes and bars face, or they are intentionally using a crisis to assist in shackling all of these people and many more into forms of debt and the emotional bondage that accompanies it, simply so the friends and supporters of the Government can look at the piles of cash that they already have and smile as they start making even more.

Whether deliberate or created by stupidity and ignorance on the part of politicians who should always know better, the situation that this Government is now facilitating for us all will quickly become little more than profiteering from the misery of the many, simply to line the pockets of the few.

No matter what anyone says – whether they are an MP, so-called ‘expert’ or specialist, journalist or anyone else who has fashioned themselves as part of the ‘celebrity cause’, the solutions that the Government are now offering up do not go far enough in just about every way.

The PM, the Chancellor he appointed, the Government and the Politicians around him have the power and therefore the means to do whatever is necessary to help all of us and keep the Country in the best position going forward as it is possible to do so. But that is not going to happen if politicians are misguided by the self-interests and biases of the people and influences around them, rather than the Public at large – which should always be any Governments one and only cause.

Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures on the part of the people that we have elected to lead us.

This means they must step up, read the situation for what it is in reality for everyone – rather than what they think it might be or what their advisers are telling them – and adopt a much bigger, realistic and worldly view.

Economic thinking is just another set of ideas that become real simply because it is the line that people choose to believe.

Current economic theory is one founded upon the idea that money must be kept flowing at all times, just as if it is a blood supply that cannot ever be stopped. It works and operates on the basis that money and the systems that support its generation and movement are the only important thing.

They are not.

What economists and the people who have been influenced into thinking this way are failing to consider, is there is something far more important than money. That is the people and the communities that we live in. Beyond the thinking and the ideas that the ‘money men’ and their supporters choose to accept, there is most definitely another and very clear way to approach this crisis which is an option.

As such our decision makers are currently making a choice. One that is all about profit or all about them.

It should be people first. Money only when its sensible to return to it thereafter.

To deal effectively with the Coronavirus Crisis and without long term fallout for the many, the economy as it stands can be and should be shut down and stopped from operating in its current form.

Interest accumulation should be halted, and a payment or repayment holiday imposed on everything – whether it is for domestic use or for business – so that EVERYONE is being treated fairly and just the same.

The Government should temporarily renationalise all essential utilities and services – that’s the ones that were sold off and should be in the hands of non-profit making management and ownership anyway – and simply take the steps necessary to underwrite supply to ensure that the essential services the public need are simply provided for the duration of the Crisis without the need for anyone to worry about how they continue to pay.

For the people who have been laid off, have had to stop trading, have had their hours zeroed out or have had their incomes stopped by the Coronavirus Crisis in any way, there should be a basic income provided to cover the costs of food and essential items so that everyone is able to function in their homes and remain clean and healthy in every other way.

To do so would ensure that the people who have been left completely vulnerable and at the mercy of circumstances that they had no part in creating, are able to standstill and most importantly survive at the very least, without anything changing. They will therefore placed in the best situation possible to pick up and return their own lives to normality alongside those of everyone when the Coronavirus Crisis is accepted as being over and what will then become life as usual is once again ready to begin.

For the businesses and the workers who are able to continue working throughout the Crisis, the payment holiday that they will then all inadvertently receive will itself be a bonus and for many of them thanks enough.

Yes, the Government could and should now be doing this.

MPs, Politicians, Government Officers and Advisors must start thinking outside of their very tunnelled and out-of-tune Westminster box.

Just to begin with, these are preventative steps the Government should now take:

  • Ditch the £Multi-Billion plan for Grants, Subsidies, and underwriting Loans
  • Stop Interest payments and accumulation of any kind
  • Stop Loan Repayments 
  • Stop Mortgage Repayments
  • Stop Rent Payments
  • Stop Leasing Payments
  • Stop Utility Bill Payments
  • Stop Phone Payments
  • Stop Broadband Payments
  • Stop TV Streaming Payments
  • Stop Insurance Payments without penalty for any function not in use whilst maintaining ongoing cover for capital value without charge
  • Stop any other form of contract subscription which is non-essential in any form

And a here are some proactive steps that the Government should also begin by taking:

  • Provide a Basic Income to cover the cost of food and essential items for everyone, their dependents, and the people they care for, who has lost their income as a result of the Crisis 
  • Provide a top-up for anyone, their dependents, and the people they care for who’s income has been reduced to a level below that which matches that above
  • Take all former public services that were privatised back into temporary Government control
  • Provide gas, electricity, and water to every household for the duration of the crisis without charge
  • Create legislation that outlaws profiteering or price gauging of any kind, with companies, their directors or the individuals fined heavily or jailed when charged
  • Create legislation that prevents any commercial or private interest seeking compensation or interest of any kind from anyone or any business who has not paid them for the duration of the crisis, in the future at any time.

Setting any of us up to fail in the long term as a result of implementing policies during a time of crisis that have not been through will not be in the best interests of anyone. Least of all the Politicians who are failing us by coming up with such stupidity or lack of foresight in the first place.

Fundamentally, the approach currently being taken is morally as well as practically wrong.

This National Crisis and the future of this Country of ours simply demands thinking from them that is new.

Our Politicians are failing us over flooding, but this is nothing new. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is simply the method they use to prioritise everything they do

 

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Tewkesbury in Flood. Image thanks to http://www.theguardian.com

It’s now 12 years since the 2007 Gloucestershire Floods.

The people living and working in Villages and Towns around mid and Northern Gloucestershire and South Worcestershire experienced the worst that inland flooding can throw at us – and for a great many even more, when critical infrastructure was affected and the drinking water supply dried up as result.

Nobody could argue that the impact of the event did not come to the attention and supposed scrutiny of Westminster Politicians at the time. Pictures of RAF Rescue Helicopters winching stranded people to safety whilst hovering against the backdrop of the Cotswold Hills quickly caught international attention. I stood outside the Local Council Offices when then newly appointed Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived.

At the time, within the immediacy of the flooding event itself, it felt like the powers that be simply couldn’t do enough.

But the moment that the floodwaters receded, the RAF had returned their big yellow flying machines to their bases and tap water supplies were restored, the media’s and therefore the attention of the politicians with the real power to do something meaningful simply drifted off to elsewhere and beyond.

Yes, remedial flood protection work took place here and there – especially in places that are very much in the wider public’s eye.

But the changes made in response to the Floods that year were in many ways little more than being aesthetic.

There was then and has been since no change in the way that Politicians, Government and the Agencies address the causes, influences upon and effects of flooding across the UK – despite many similar experiences for other people and communities across the Country that have already happened and are taking place in Yorkshire and the East Midlands today.

What was clear to me as a Local Councillor at the time of the 2007 Floods here, was that the Environment Agency wasn’t fit for purpose; that flooding was and always would be managed on the basis of so-called tried and tested thinking. And worst of all, that there was absolutely no room for new approaches or original thinking to deal with the problem as the specialists and those who possess the fiefdoms that are public sector responsibility would always know best – no matter what the reality and impact upon real people was or would be that was involved.

Nothing has changed.

If anything, things have got worse.

And whilst processes and procedures to deal the impact upon families that have to move out of their homes and perhaps live in caravans as a result for many months now appear to have become normalised, the fact that Government has concentrated only on managing the effects of any flooding crisis at the time, rather than dealing with the causes and what lies ahead should be telling us all that we really need to know.

Flooding isn’t a vote winner when there’s no water on the ground

With the shallow, self-serving politicians that we have in power today, the harsh reality we must all face is that in their majority, Politicians and the Political Parties that they represent are not interested in seeing any task through from start to finish, unless they believe that doing so will secure them more votes.

What our Emergency Services, our Military, and the people on the ground will do in Yorkshire and the East Midlands during the current crisis to help people will not be an issue in Westminster once the water has gone and this ridiculous General Election Campaign has passed by.

Addressing the issues that count and will make a difference – that’s Planning Policy, responding to the Housing Crisis, how we address Climate Change and the way that the Public Sector itself actually works, are not and never will be on the agenda for longer than it remains in the news. Or at least not until we have politicians with very different motives and people-first mindset involved.

Planning Policy

Many people don’t understand that Local Authorities don’t make planning law. They just interpret it.

And with rules that come from the centre – rules that sound great because they seem to consider this and sound great because they appear to consider that – we have all been misled into believing that a one-size-fits-all approach to the way that we build in all locations, environments and conditions across this Country can work out for everyone wherever they are in the same way – even with different people with different motives doing the interpretation that is involved.

There is no room within the Planning System for local understanding and anecdotal evidence to be considered.

For instance, the Planning System is itself so arbitrary that floodplains that have been built up and covered with dumped earth and inert debris then qualify as being safe to build on. Yet there is no consideration for the displacement of floodwaters that would have historically rested at that location. Nor is there though given for how that water might flow around this newly created island or indeed what other properties or places would now be affected by what will be both a new and at time of flooding inevitably different water flow.

For the impact of future flooding events to be limited for existing properties, Towns, Cities and Villages to the same levels and impact that they are having right now, Planning rules and the way that we interpret them must change to embrace the increasing likelihood of the black swans, rather than the imbedded mentality of ‘it couldn’t happen here’.

Unswerving technical adherence to manmade rules doesn’t allow for reach and impact of Mother Nature.

Solving problems without creating others must be a priority for all areas of civic life and activity.

The response to the Housing Crisis

 Yet another of the political footballs that is currently being bounced around is the topic of which Political Party will build more houses and how quickly they will build them if they should find themselves in power once the Election question has been resolved.

The myth that we need to build so many new houses evaporates the very moment that you consider how much they actually cost.

How often have you seen house prices drop in any part of this Country when a new estate or development has been built?

The truth is that prices of old and new property in the local areas usually rise and like most things where prices and need can be manipulated, profit and therefore greed are the underlying cause.

Building at the levels we have already embraced is already creating a time bomb for potential flooding incidents that would never have had this kind of impact in the past – especially with planning policy as it is.

There needs to be a massive rethink and politicians who were thinking about the people they represent would certainly bring this foolish and ill considered approach to the problem to an immediate stop.

The way to deal with the housing crisis is to make better and more equitable use of the houses and buildings that we already have.

It isn’t helpful to pretend that the only solution is to keep on building more and more, whilst creating many more real ones than the hollow one that it is supposed to solve.

Climate Change

Yes, Climate Change or the Climate Crisis that our young people are now beginning to champion and the way of thinking that they are challenging is a very real part of the flooding problem too.

The weather in this Country and around the World is changing – no matter what your views might be about the cause.

The cold hard reality that we all have to face is that the weather patterns that are here today will take many years to reverse.

But there are steps that we can take to address their progression and pathway to becoming worse.

It is not simply about legislating to change the behavior of people who are already trying to make the best of what can be very difficult lives.

This is where the inexperience and impractical idealism of young people could easily be seen to make a valid argument that is beneficial to us all seem outwardly very wrong. Like Flooding events, protests soon disappear from the minds and plans of the wrong politicians and that is the truth – no matter how wrong.

Sadly, with Climate Change, much of the problem is again about money and greed.

The businesses that have the biggest part to play just need to be led to think differently and see that the profit which is their obsession is still there for them tomorrow as it is for them today. It will just come from them investing, operating and behaving ethically in a very different way.

Industry and money might not be listening now, but that will be different when we have different people in charge.

The necessity of political change that wont be served simply by having a General Election

The complexity of the problems that are contributing to the Housing Crisis, the failure of Planning Policy, Climate Change and Flooding as an issue in its own right will never be dealt with in the way that it needs to be by politicians who are only interested in the outcome of the next Election and how they convince all of us to give them their vote.

If we want the change that we need with the issues that we are facing not just like Flooding, but which we are experiencing each and every day, we must elect different people into Parliament, our Councils and into positions of power who will put people first. Politicians who know what it will take and – most importantly – are actually prepared to do everything necessary to get all of those things that need doing – and not just Brexit – done.

 

 

 

 

 

Labour’s Universal Basic Income is nothing but a temporary bridge across a black hole of a problem that none of the Parties understand or are prepared to deal with

89447a1c-d5a9-4158-b167-d12c506c5774The headlines this morning make painful reading to anyone who can see the real costs of The Labour Party’s plans and what they will involve.

Actually, it’s not the suggested figure of £1.2 Trillion over five years spent on public services that the real problem.

It’s the reality that this child-in-a-sweet-shop-with-birthday-money approach to fixing public services involves nothing more original than throwing money at the problems with no investment for the future or genuine long-term returns involved.

All well and good you might say if your only priority is to get a government elected and indefinitely keep that power.

But for the millions of British People who are experiencing the arse end of all that’s wrong in this Country each and every day, any positive impact from Labour’s great giveaway will be short lived once the default causes of all these societal ills have quickly bubbled back up to the surface again through the pile of vaporising money that these cynical left-wing politicians tell us they have in store.

The hollow promise that comes with a Universal Basic Income is the suggestion that poverty can be addressed as simply as giving everyone the same amount of money each month before spending on everything that life demands of us begins.

It’s a nice idea. And for people caught in a poverty trap with little or nothing, the promise of a lump of no-strings-attached cash each month is an electoral vote winner that is likely to go far.

If only life were really that simple.

The biggest problem that people on or below the poverty line in this Country face is not what income they have. It’s keeping control of the cost of everything that is essential to live, get by and to enjoy a basic or acceptable standard of living or quality of life.

Identifying the amount of money, or the combination of a Universal Basic Income payment plus any benefits that might be payable that are involved right now, today, doesn’t address the issue of what they will cost thereafter. Nor does it address the issue of how the real cost of living got to where it is today.

The reason for this is one of the greatest cultural ills of business today.

It is the exploitation of every opportunity to make profit wherever and whenever possible. Not because that’s what makes businesses work and function. But simply becuase the circumstances exist where they choose to because they legally can.

Too many profit hungry business owners, managers, shareholders, agents, financiers and speculators are taking too much money out of a system where there would otherwise be plenty that was affordable for all. They interrupt and place themselves within supply chains, production chains and service chains without adding any value to the process themselves – and this process often happens more than once.

Gandhi once said that ‘Earth provides enough to satisfy every mans need, but not every mans greed’. Our politicians clearly don’t read and if they did, they certainly don’t listen.

Whilst an argument can be made that Labours Election Manifesto includes a plan to re-nationalise essential public industries such as power, water and rail, the reality that they have no plans to address the institutional problems that exist within the Public Sector mean that the profits currently being sucked out of these industries by private shareholders will simply be redistributed to other destinations of a self-serving kind, whilst the service itself and cost to users will progressively get even worse whilst costing us all even more.

Addressing the cost and regulating the freedom of the private interests that you can never realistically remove from all manufacturing and production, services and supply, to charge whatever they want for goods and services that are essential to providing a basic quality of life for us all, should therefore be the primary aim of any political party that really wants to improve life.

It should be a simple task for politicians who genuinely care and intend to lift the poorest in society out of the circumstances that are a vicious circle that condemn them to want, debt and an experience of life that nobody in the 21st Century UK should ever have.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives – in fact none of the Political Parties we have on offer to us as Voters today, really have any idea nor understanding of how the monetary system works. Yet they are obsessed with monetary theory.

They don’t know how business operates. But they believe themselves qualified to regulate or deregulate at will.

They certainly have no appreciation of how technology is not only destroying and dehumanising relationships. But is also making the ability of the unscrupulous to exploit others and the vulnerable easier than it ever has been before.

The people or so-called politicians that we already have and that we are about to elect again in December are not fit to rule over us. They have no idea of what the problems facing this country really are and how they affect people of all demographics and backgrounds. They have no vision of how those problems can be addressed. And they certainly have no idea of what they really need to do to begin solving any of them.

Until we have politicians and leaders in this country who do see, understand and are prepared to do whatever it is that is necessary to deal with the issues that this Country faces, the fuckwits that we have in power will play around only with what they perceive to be the problems that others outside the Westminster bubble face, whilst what amounts to their tinkering makes everything everyone else is experiencing a whole lot worse.

 

No Boris, profit isn’t a god to be worshipped. Many of the problems you tell us you care about are driven by greed for money as the root cause

5824a3c1-508e-4d1f-a672-e453b9d85794In this world, perception is everything.

First impressions count more than anything else.

We have politicians who rule us – and therefore are also failing us – because they judge everything on the basis of what is effect rather than the cause.

Profit or rather the generation of wealth and money was an inevitable topic and focus for policy in this upcoming General Election.

Yet within the majority of Policy areas it has and will not be identified in any way as being relevant. Even though the motivation to secure it, extend it and to be able to play with it will almost certainly be buried deep down somewhere. Possibly many times over as any problems root cause.

The Politicians who covet the role of Leading this Country should know this.

But they don’t.

Whether that ignorance is wilful or innocent, the result is just the same for us all.

On one side of the not-so political divide, we have a Marxist Leader on the verge of entering No10, who will do everything that he and his supporters can to dismantle the apparatus of commerciality, simply because Labour do not understand or value the intrinsically human concept of individual aspiration. They believe it possible to make a world fair that is fundamentally unfair by its very nature, simply by coercion and inflicting a set of man-made rules.

On the other we have Boris and his conservatives who are actually only conservative in name. They call themselves ‘one nation’ but follow a way of being based on freedom of the markets and the ridiculous idea that deregulating business and the markets gives commercial interests the motivation to think of and look after the needs of the public and all others ethically – all when profit and finding new and innovative ways to increase it legally but without care for anything else is money’s one and only true cause.

Both Corbyn and Johnson, and their respective Parties and the ideologies that currently underpin them have got the whole question of money, profit, power and influence completely wrong.

They do not have any understanding or appreciation of the role of human nature in all of the problems that this Country is facing.

They don’t see or place any value on the relationship between money and profit as a motivator and how it overshadows so much of public policy as the open secret that nobody talks about because so many of the problems that the UK faces have the obsession with making more and more money deep down as the root cause.

They do not see how the cultural malaise of everyone taking money out of production, services and supply chains without adding any value are exponentially widening the already significant wealth divide.

They simply don’t understand what they are actually doing.

They have no experience of the lives and futures that their ignorance is wrecking.

But the system allows them to continue on without question, whilst the problems such stupidity causes continues to pass them by as they become mine and yours.

Until such time as we have Leaders running this Country who understand all the problems they have been tasked to deal with, no matter who they effect, what they are or what work and effort it will take for them to be solved, the depth and breadth of the issues that we are facing right across our households and our communities alike will simply continue to be there and in all probability develop further – no matter the crap we are being told.

None of the Politicians who are seeking our Votes in this coming General Election are seeking to do anything differently than any of those who have campaigned to be elected to run this Country before.

Look at the problems and the trouble that they have already caused.

Until we do have politicians who do give a shit about how what they do impacts upon all of us too, it doesnt matter whether we are Left, Right, Centre, Leaver, Remainer, Rich or Poor.

We all have a whole lot more pain in store.

Ignore the climate change concerns of young people and children if you dare. But addressing the shared fate of nations will help to solve many more of our UK problems as they have the same cause

getting-startedYoung people and children share an idealistic view of the world and how it should be. Their view may not be practical or show any understanding of the issues involved. But that doesn’t mean that their passion should not be our guiding light and the one that we follow. Not just in terms of tackling the real causes of the climate problem, but also as we move forward to a future where we work together to put all of the wrongs right.

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg appears to have set the world alight with her ideas and passion for the climate cause. But the sensationalism around her carries as much cynicism as it does genuine feeling. In fact, it may well be a whole lot more.

Whether you feel able to argue about the causes of climate change or not, the reality is that change is certainly taking place. It is now in everyone’s interests to do everything possible to mitigate anything and everything that we recognise as being a possible cause.

The biggest problem that we, and the many young protesters that are out and about this world of ours today face, is that the focus on climate change that they and most of us already share is based upon and focussed only on the effects of the problem. Not the actual cause.

We are not talking about the overuse of plastics, chemicals, fossil fuels and more. Those are but the effects of the problem. A problem which is based on a worldwide culture where those with more always want more.

The world uses materials and methods of working which damage the environment because they make everything cheap. Not cheap for us or other end users. But cheap for the people and companies that make, sell and transport our goods and services to us.

Climate change is costly for the future of the entire world.

But for those making money out of it, futures costly misery comes to them today feeling rather cheap indeed.

What we are seeing unfold in front of our eyes really is the fate of nations. Nothing less. Nothing more.

And as our children and young people are rightly telling us, climate change or the effects of it are no longer something that any of us can or should attempt to deny.

The momentum which is now being unleashed by the passion of younger people alone, can now open the doors to dialogue and change that before has been resisted by big business and self interest. It has therefore has been unknown.

But to capitalise on the opportunity, there must come a wider realisation between all of us that we cannot continue to think that the only god available to us is money. A way of thinking that will require our politicians to bring a very different, intuitive, considered and above all selfless way of working to the fore.

The companies, bankers and financiers that sit behind these problems, making money all the time, just need to be handled differently, by leaders able and not afraid to act upon all that they know.

They must be asked the question ‘would you prefer to fold when the wheels fall off all of this in just a few years, or change approach and adapt to a new way of thinking, so that you are making a good profit, albeit ethically in many years time?

To do this, our politicians and the governments made up of them must think very differently and look at every level of shared commonality as what makes us all one.

Politicians can no longer see themselves, their own interests, their own ideas and the people they relate to as the only priority or cause.

This is not a question of creating a world government or trying to use anything as an excuse to build empires.

Its about accepting and being open to working together. Knowing that even across borders, we have things in common as part of a bigger picture, that must now outweigh the comparative trivialities that only define us as nations and as cultures.

We can be different. But also the same.

We only need to make the right steps and to do that we must look all of this for what it is.

We must stop still and pause.

 

image thanks to unknown