Declining trust, institutional fragility, and the danger of mistaking symptoms for causes.
Trust in political institutions is falling, public frustration is rising, and many people increasingly feel that politics offers different language but the same underlying direction. The slogans change. The faces change. The promises change. But the choices in front of us often seem to lead back to the same narrow set of answers.
This is why politics feels broken to so many people. It is not only because of scandal, incompetence, polarisation, or distrust, although all of those matter. It is because the political system itself appears to be losing its ability to adapt. Institutions feel brittle. Public debate feels repetitive. Outsider movements rise, but often carry the same assumptions as the establishment they criticise.
The risk of the moment is not simply anger, division, or frustration. It is misdiagnosis: the danger that a complex, systemic crisis will be treated as if it were a single problem with a single solution.
Why Does Politics Feel Broken?
Politics feels broken because people are experiencing several overlapping pressures at once: declining institutional trust, economic insecurity, cultural fragmentation, political polarisation, and a governing system that struggles to respond to complex problems. When these pressures are interpreted as one-dimensional failures – corruption, incompetence, weak leadership, or bad ethics – the proposed solutions rarely reach the deeper causes.
Collapse, in this context, does not mean sudden breakdown. More often it means the gradual loss of adaptive capacity: institutions becoming less able to absorb pressure, public trust becoming harder to sustain, and familiar political tools becoming less effective at solving emerging problems.
Why Everything in Politics Feels the Same
The political system is not just struggling. It is running out of room. Many parties, campaigns, and “new” options still draw from the same restricted deck: the same assumptions about markets, competition, growth, individual responsibility, and institutional management. That is why it can be difficult to see genuine daylight between them.
When a political system narrows, the public naturally looks elsewhere. Outsider movements become attractive because they sound fresher, less compromised, and more willing to say what established figures avoid. But unfamiliar is not the same as new.
Many outsider movements rise by naming real failures, but they often remain shaped by the same deeper instincts as the system they oppose. They may reject the tone of the establishment while keeping its underlying logic: competition as the default answer, market discipline as the main tool, and self-interest reframed as principle.
This is the restricted deck problem. A movement can appear disruptive on the surface while still being constrained by the same limited tools underneath. It can criticise the system without escaping the logic that made the system brittle.
The Perception Gap: Symptoms Are Easier to See Than Systems
Most people experience political crisis through its visible symptoms: arguments, scandals, headlines, personalities, broken promises, and day-to-day drama. These symptoms matter, but they are not the whole story.
The deeper problems are quieter. They sit inside institutions, economic pressures, cultural tensions, and the erosion of public trust. They do not fit neatly into interviews, slogans, or campaign messages, so they are often left unnamed.
This creates the perception gap: people feel system-level instability, but they mostly see surface-level conflict.
Someone may feel a loss of security and see only incompetence. They may feel institutional fragility and see only political theatre. They may feel economic pressure and see only blame. The deeper structure remains hidden behind the noise.
When people see only one dimension of collapse, they naturally look for one-dimensional explanations. They want someone who can point to a single cause and offer a single fix. That is why simple narratives are so powerful: not because they are accurate, but because they are comforting.
The danger is that people then choose solutions that match the part they can see. They try to fix a system problem with personality politics, institutional fragility with anger, cultural tension with slogans, and economic pressure with blame. None of these responses reaches the deeper causes.
Why Outsider Movements Rise – and Why They Often Fail
Outsider movements rise when established politics no longer feels capable of interpreting the moment. They gain traction because they appear to break the repetition. They speak plainly. They name frustration. They offer clarity when public life feels foggy.
But there is a crucial transition point when a movement stops being a protest and starts becoming a possible alternative. At that point it must evolve. It has to move from naming failure to understanding complexity, from expressing anger to building capacity, from opposing the system to explaining how a different system would work.
If it cannot make that transition, the opportunity is lost. The movement may still win attention, followers, seats, or headlines, but the deeper chance to change the direction of public life disappears.
When that happens, a vacuum opens. People remain frustrated, but the movement that could have organised that frustration into something constructive has failed to deepen. The space is then filled by movements that sound calm, confident, and certain – even when their certainty is built on oversimplification.
The Danger of Simple Explanations
Simple explanations become powerful in exhausted societies. They reduce complexity to a manageable story. They identify a culprit, promise a remedy, and make the future feel controllable again.
If people believe the crisis is only about ethics, they look for ethical heroes. If they believe it is only about incompetence, they look for competent managers. If they believe it is only about corruption, they look for clean hands. If they believe it is only about mismanagement, they look for stronger leadership.
All of these may be desirable. But none is sufficient on its own. A crisis of institutional trust, democratic legitimacy, economic pressure, and cultural fragmentation cannot be solved by fixing only one visible fault line.
This is how misinterpretation deepens collapse. The surface problem is addressed while the underlying system continues to lose capacity. The noise is treated, but not the structure. The drama is managed, but not the direction. The symptom is soothed, but the disease remains.
As research into political trust has repeatedly shown, declining confidence in representative institutions can make democratic systems more fragile and make it harder for governments to respond to shared problems. That does not mean every institution deserves automatic trust. It means that once legitimacy erodes, societies need more than better messaging. They need institutions capable of earning trust again.
What a Systemic Crisis Looks Like
A systemic crisis is rarely experienced as one dramatic event. It is more often experienced as a pattern: promises that do not land, institutions that struggle to absorb pressure, public debate that becomes more reactive, and citizens who feel that nothing quite changes even when everything seems urgent.
It can appear as declining trust in government, parliament, media, parties, expertise, or public administration. It can appear as polarisation, disengagement, cynicism, or the repeated rise of anti-establishment politics. It can appear as economic pressure being translated into cultural blame, or cultural anxiety being translated into institutional hostility.
The crucial point is that these are not separate stories. They interact. Economic insecurity weakens trust. Low trust makes compromise harder. Weak compromise makes institutions less effective. Ineffective institutions deepen frustration. Frustration creates demand for simple narratives. Simple narratives then make the system even harder to repair.
This is why the crisis feels larger than ordinary political disagreement. Democracies are built to contain disagreement. They are not built to function well when the public no longer believes the system can hear, process, or respond to pressure.
Seeing the Whole Picture
If the risk of the moment comes from misdiagnosis, then the way through begins with seeing the whole picture. Not the noise alone. Not the personalities alone. Not the scandals, slogans, or surface explanations alone. The task is to understand how institutions, economics, culture, trust, and political behaviour reinforce one another.
That does not require specialist expertise. It requires resisting the temptation to make the moment smaller than it is.
Once collapse is understood as multi-layered, the appeal of single-layer solutions weakens. One person cannot fix it. One party cannot fix it. One slogan cannot fix it. One moral diagnosis cannot fix it. A system problem requires system-level understanding.
This does not mean giving up on clarity. It means refusing false clarity. The strongest analysis is not the analysis that makes everything simple. It is the analysis that makes complexity understandable without pretending it has disappeared.
The greatest danger is not political disagreement. Democracies are designed to accommodate disagreement. The greater danger is misdiagnosis: treating a complex, systemic crisis as if it were a single problem with a single solution.
When societies misunderstand the nature of their challenges, they choose remedies that intensify the underlying condition. They mistake confidence for competence, simplicity for truth, and visibility for understanding.
Understanding the whole picture is therefore not a luxury. It is a prerequisite for responding effectively to the moment we are living through.
The solutions we need won’t come from anything we already do. Because it’s everything we already do that caused the problems.
The Familiar Path That Led Us Here
Right now, people believe they’re seeing the full picture. They believe they understand the crisis, the chaos, the uncertainty – because the surface‑level symptoms are impossible to ignore.
But the deeper reality is still being missed. Not because it’s hidden, but because most people aren’t yet in a place where they can recognise what they’re looking at.
Perspectives shape perception. And when perspectives are shaped by habit, fear, conditioning, or the comfort of familiar narratives, they filter out the very things that matter most.
That’s why so many warning signs are dismissed. Why so many contradictions go unchallenged. Why people can feel informed while still being completely unaware of what’s actually unfolding.
Understanding doesn’t come from information alone. It comes from readiness – from the moment when someone’s internal landscape shifts enough for them to finally see what was always there.
Until that readiness arrives, even the clearest truth will look like noise, exaggeration, or irrelevance.
And that’s the challenge we face: not just to speak truth, but to recognise that truth only lands when the conditions allow it to.
Seeing Through the Fog of Perspectives
In times like these, people assume they’re fully aware of what’s happening around them.
The noise is loud, the chaos is visible, and the headlines never stop. It creates the illusion of clarity – as if simply noticing the disruption means understanding its cause.
But awareness and understanding are not the same thing.
Much of what matters is still out of view. Not because it’s hidden, but because most people aren’t yet equipped to recognise the patterns behind the events.
They see the symptoms, not the structure.
They see the fallout, not the forces shaping it.
They see the drama, not the design.
That’s why so many explanations sound far‑fetched to those who aren’t ready for them. Why warnings are dismissed. Why truths are labelled extreme until the moment they become obvious.
And this is the danger: when people believe they already see everything, they stop looking for what they’ve missed.
Rattles in the Vehicle We Thought Was Safe
We are, metaphorically speaking, passengers in a vehicle we don’t realise is breaking or already broken.
We race along, ignoring the rattles, because it’s still moving.
We convince ourselves everything’s fine, right up until the moment it stops and we’re forced to accept that we’ve broken down.
The warning signs are everywhere. No matter your business, sector, or situation, the red flags are waving from every direction in plain sight. But because the wheels are still turning – or appear to be – we keep believing that a change of driver or a quick pit stop is all we need.
We imagine that after a brief pause, the journey will resume, more comfortable than before, with a better seat and a better view.
But the vehicle – whether you can picture it as a car, train, or bus – represents everything we do and everything we believe we’ve always done.
The road beneath it is the path we’ve been set upon, shaped by our behaviours, expectations, attitudes, approaches, and the values we’ve allowed to guide us.
The Quiet Ways We All Contributed
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: no matter what problem you’re facing, no matter what crisis is unfolding, if it involves decisions made by others, then yes – you can probably identify who’s responsible. But at some level, we all share responsibility. We all helped build the road.
Even if we didn’t make the active choices that led us here, into this mess, we made choices nonetheless.
When we avoided risk, chose the easy option, kept quiet to avoid rocking the boat, ignored the truth, or failed to do what was right – we took action. And often, that action was simply allowing those with hidden agendas to get their way.
Everything has a cost.
For decades, we’ve been conditioned by manipulation, sleight of hand, and narratives designed to convince us that non‑conformity leads to isolation.
But the real cost has been far greater.
Everything that once held value – our businesses, workplaces, sports, social spaces, food, water, money, communication, education, jobs, reputations – has been diminished.
Not by accident, but by design. So it could be reformed, centralised, and ultimately placed under someone else’s control – even while we still believe we own it.
This includes the institutions people still trust by default: government, the public sector, and the systems built around them. They were supposed to safeguard society, yet they’ve become part of the machinery that has allowed decline, mismanagement, and manipulation to take root. Not because everyone within them is corrupt, but because the structures themselves are no longer fit for purpose – and haven’t been for a long time.
Understanding Comes Only When We’re Ready
The problems we face — in farming, hospitality, industry, with people, community, the environment, government, the public sector – all stem from the same system. From all the “everythings” each and every one of us do.
No matter our background or bubble, it all adds up to the same thing: the trouble the world is now in.
And what we’ve done and been doing so far cannot or will not fix it.
It doesn’t matter if we wait for a change in government while continuing to elect candidates chosen by people we don’t know.
It doesn’t matter if we keep believing the establishment is structured to serve us, or that it has the integrity to do so.
It doesn’t matter if we trust the financial system, or believe that inflation and the cost of living are beyond anyone’s control.
If we don’t change the fundamental building blocks – of life, economics, and governance – then no matter who’s in charge, things will only get worse.
And we’ll keep being told they’re getting better.
Crisis as Catalyst
Today, life just happens to us.
Business, money, governance – they’re systems we’re expected to show up for, participate in, and conform to. That’s it.
But conformity is what brought us here. And we’re standing at the doorway of something that, once we step through it, may quickly reveal that there is no way back.
It’s only this way and we only got here because we surrendered our power – more often than not without ever realising that we had even given it up.
Building Something That Puts People First
If we want to change anything – even the smallest thing – in the world around us, we must participate. We must play our part. That’s what living a proper life demands.
And if we want things not just to improve, but to become truly better, then we must all get involved.
The collapse we’re experiencing offers something rare: the chance to see and experience life differently. A chance that wouldn’t have come if things had continued as they were. Which they no longer can.
As circumstances worsen and reality begins to speak for itself, we have a choice.
We can take back our power. We can work with the people we know – the people we share our lives with – to reclaim genuine control. To put people, community, and the environment first.
The Local Economy & Governance System (LEGS) – built upon The Basic Living Standard – offers a new structure for the future.
LEGS isn’t a shortcut, and it isn’t a promise that someone else will fix things for us.
LEGS is simply a framework that puts people, community, and the environment back at the centre of life – where they always should have been.
What comes next won’t be shaped by governments, institutions, or systems that have already failed us. It will be shaped by the choices we make now, the conversations we have with the people around us, and the willingness we each find to choose and step through the doorway in front of us, that leads to a Future that no one else can define.
The world we knew is ending. But what replaces it is still ours to decide.
Further Reading
1. Awakening & How We Perceive the Crisis
Understanding how people ‘wake up’ to what’s really happening
The Three World Orders and the Coming Choice: How Venezuela, Iran, and a Fractured Global System Are Forcing Humanity Toward a Crossroads
Introduction: The Moment the Hidden Becomes Visible
Every era has a moment when the tensions that once simmered quietly beneath the surface suddenly break into the open.
For years, the world has been drifting toward such a moment – a slow, grinding collision between what are now three competing visions of global power.
Today, the events unfolding in Venezuela, the rising turbulence in Iran, and the escalating confrontation between the United States, Europe, and the BRICS nations suggest that the long‑brewing conflict may be about to erupt into something undeniable.
But this is not simply geopolitics. It is not just another chapter in the endless struggle between nations.
It is the beginning of a profound reckoning with the systems that govern our lives – systems built on money, control, and the belief that human beings exist to serve the machinery of power.
The world is approaching a crossroads where we may soon be forced to choose between a future defined by money and a future defined by people. And the chaos now emerging may be the catalyst that makes that choice unavoidable.
1. What We Think War Is – and What War Has Become
Most people still imagine war as something unmistakable: tanks crossing borders, cities burning, soldiers in trenches, and the kind of devastation that defined the two World Wars.
If not that, then the spectre of nuclear exchange – a few catastrophic decisions by powerful men who should know better.
But the world rarely repeats its past so neatly.
The turmoil now engulfing the UK, the US, Europe, and much of the world does not resemble the wars we were taught to recognise. It does not look like the wars in our history books. It does not feel like the wars our grandparents described.
And so we tell ourselves that we are not at war.
But we are.
We are in a war that:
• does not require armies,
• does not rely on bombs,
• and does not announce itself with declarations.
It is a war fought through currencies, sanctions, supply chains, digital systems, and the quiet rewriting of laws that reshape society without consent.
It is a war over who controls the world’s money, who defines the rules of global trade, and who gets to shape the future.
This is not a hot war.
It is not a cold war.
It is a systemic war – a war of structures, narratives, and economic weapons.
And the tragedy is that most people don’t see it, because we’ve been conditioned to believe war only counts when the bombs fall.
2. The Three World Orders Now Colliding
For years, competing visions of global power have been circling each other like predators. Each believes it will inherit the world. Each believes it is the rightful architect of the future.
Today, there are three:
A. Trump’s America: A Nationalist, Transactional Order
This world order is built on:
• tariffs,
• leverage,
• economic pressure,
• and the reassertion of US dominance.
It is a world where the dollar remains king – or dies trying.
A world where alliances are transactional, not ideological.
A world where power is measured in deals, not treaties.
B. The EU/WEF Technocratic Order
This vision is not nationalist but supranational.
It imagines:
• digital currencies,
• centralised governance,
• “managed democracy”,
• and a world run by global institutions rather than nation states.
It is a world where crises justify permanent oversight.
A world where stability is engineered, not chosen.
A world where freedom is redefined as compliance.
C. The BRICS Alternative
Led by Russia and China, this order is built on:
• gold reserves,
• commodity power,
• and the promise of a post‑Western financial system.
It is a world where the West no longer sets the rules.
A world where the dollar is dethroned.
A world where economic power shifts eastward.
These three systems are not merely competing.
They are colliding.
And the crises in Venezuela and Iran may be the sparks that ignite the confrontation they have been preparing for.
3. Venezuela, Iran, and the Fracture Point of a Global System
Venezuela: The Resource Flashpoint
Venezuela is not just a country in crisis. It is a nation sitting on some of the world’s largest oil reserves – a resource that all three world orders desperately need to control or deny to their rivals.
US intervention there is not simply humanitarian.
It is strategic.
It is economic.
It is systemic.
Iran: The Geopolitical Fuse
Iran is the crossroads of:
• energy routes,
• regional power,
• and global alliances.
Turbulence there threatens to destabilise not just the Middle East but the entire global economic system.
It forces the US, Europe, and BRICS into positions they can no longer hide behind diplomacy.
Together, Venezuela and Iran expose the truth:
the world’s systems are no longer stable enough to absorb shocks.
The fractures are widening.
The masks are slipping.
The stakes are rising.
4. The War for Money – and the Illusion That Money Is Real
The uncomfortable truth is that the world’s economic system has already collapsed in everything but name.
Western governments borrow money that doesn’t exist, from institutions that don’t create value, to sustain systems that no longer function.
The BRICS nations know this.
The EU knows this.
Trump knows this.
The fight is not about ideology.
It is about who controls the reset.
Gold, dollars, digital currencies – none of these have intrinsic value. They only work because we believe in them. And belief is collapsing.
When belief collapses, systems collapse.
When systems collapse, power grabs begin.
When power grabs begin, wars – of one kind or another – follow.
5. The Elites Are Fighting for Control. The People Are Fighting for Survival.
Whether the reset is driven by:
• Trump’s America,
• the EU/WEF bloc, or
• the BRICS alliance,
the outcome for ordinary people is the same:
none of these systems are designed with us in mind.
Every one of them is built on coercion, hierarchy, and the assumption that human beings exist to serve the system – not the other way around.
But humanity is exhausted.
Exhausted by selfishness.
Exhausted by elites who dress up control as progress.
Exhausted by being told that the only value we have is economic.
The coming clash may finally force a choice that has been avoided for generations.
6. A World Built on Money – or a World Built on People
The future does not have to belong to any of the three world orders now circling each other.
A different future is possible.
One built on:
• fairness,
• balance,
• justice,
• local sovereignty,
• genuine productivity,
• and the recognition that human beings are not economic units but living, thinking, feeling people.
A future where systems serve humanity, not the other way around.
But that future will not emerge by accident.
It will only emerge when enough people recognise that the war we are in is not between nations, but between worldviews.
One worldview says money is the measure of all things.
The other says people are.
And the chaos now unfolding may be the moment when the world is finally forced to choose.
Further Reading:
1. The Mechanics and Triggers of Systemic Collapse
These works explain why the current global order is fracturing and what might trigger a reset.
It is regrettable that most people avoid confronting uncomfortable truths about the crisis we’re in.
Many actively ignore or dismiss what they know deep down to be true, preferring comfort over honesty.
But this habit of hiding from inconvenient realities isn’t new. It’s been passed down for generations. People have often chosen what feels good over what’s obviously right, leading us to our current predicament.
Pretending everything is normal, focusing only on ourselves, and letting others make decisions for us has brought us to the brink of systemic collapse.
The comfortable system we rely on is failing, and we must face this reality.
The Source of the Problem: Money
Many prefer to hear hard truths from trusted figures like academics or politicians, but deep down, we know the truth doesn’t depend on who says it.
It’s time to think, research, and analyse for ourselves.
At the heart of our problems is the money system. We’ve been conditioned to believe money is everything, shaping our choices and values around financial cost, reward, and status.
Yet, the money system itself is artificial. A belief system manipulated by private bankers, big businesses, and the politicians they control.
They change the rules to enrich themselves, transferring wealth and ownership away from ordinary people, all under the guise of normality.
Imminent System Collapse
Politicians obsess over “growth.” But for them, growth means increasing the size of the economy (GDP). Not helping small businesses or working people.
Real productivity has vanished as industries and assets have been sold off to those who profit from the system, while jobs have been outsourced.
GDP figures are misleading, counting money created through private finance and government borrowing multiple times. Politicians have tried to spend their way out of trouble, but even that strategy is failing.
With rising unemployment due to AI and unproductive sectors and a government so possessed by fear that they are regularly changing their minds, lenders are now worried the scam will be exposed.
Desperation has set in, and the government seems set to resort to ever-increasing taxes, hoping to keep the system afloat and their secrets hidden.
The System Enriches the Few
Prices keep rising while wages lag behind, making it harder for most people to keep up.
This isn’t new—it’s how the system was designed.
Once, a single working adult could support a family. But now, financial independence is reserved for the wealthy, while dependence and poverty are imposed on the rest of us.
The Myth of the Minimum Wage
The national minimum wage is misleading. It’s not enough to live on, but rather the lowest acceptable wage set by those in power, regardless of the real cost of living.
However, even the average wage isn’t enough for genuine financial freedom.
Financial Freedom Is the Solution
Almost every social problem can be traced back to the fact that the lowest-paid jobs don’t pay enough for people to live independently.
Admitting this would expose the system’s flaws and those who benefit from it.
The system survives by prioritizing money over people. Every decision made by those in power serves the money system. Not human needs.
Choosing People Over Money
If we want a better world, we must redirect government, business, and our rules to prioritize people, not money or the economy.
Unfortunately, our political leaders hide the truth instead of addressing it, covering up the growing cracks in the system.
Collapse Is Inevitable. But We Have a Choice
Systemic collapse is inevitable. But we can choose what comes next and who benefits.
If we do nothing, things will only get worse.
Those who created this mess believe they can protect themselves with wealth and security, but ordinary people will lose freedom.
The powerful will restrict our freedoms to protect their own interests.
Paradoxically, a collapse could be an opportunity.
If we embrace it, we can build a freer, fairer system for everyone. Something only possible when the current corrupt system is removed.
Each of us sees the problems this country is facing from different points of view.
Whilst conversations about the crisis now unfolding with a range of different people would almost certainly deliver a range of common themes, the emphasis, value or meaning of each of those conversations will almost certainly be different.
However, the one commonality, which isn’t about anything that we all have in common, would be the solutions that almost all of us will have based on our own world view, that in the bigger scheme of things, may be in no way similar at all.
Ironically, because so many of us have so many interpretations of the whys, hows and whats that have got us all here, and share them with what will be a relative few, we spend next to no time – if indeed any time at all, thinking about the common problems that we all really do share.
We certainly don’t think about the ways we can work together to create a better way of life for everyone and then how we get the leaders and mechanisms in place that will actually get us there.
The devil is in the detail
It really is no accident that the UK is in the kind of mess that it is. Because life has become so very complicated – and deliberately so.
The more detail, the more distracting and the more impossible a solution to just about anything might seem. Even to those amongst us who really can see that the status quo cannot continue and that no matter how bought into the things we like about the way we live – which we want to keep but don’t recognise that they are actually the part of the problem that’s making everything so impossible to fix – we really do need to snap out of the fixation with noise that’s doing none of us any good.
We must recognise that the things that work well for everyone and will work even better for everyone are much simpler than what we have been convinced we need.
It is inevitable that we will keep tripping ourselves up each and every time we think of the next step as being only about putting our own self-interest first.
Unfair, Unjust and Unworkable living, demonstrated best by Tax
Perhaps the best example of how we get lost and misdirected by the detail of what needs to change for us, rather than focusing on what needs to change so that it works for everyone, relates to the question of tax, taxation and everything else that means people like you and I are stumping up cash that we could often do with being able to spend, just so we can live without debt or in some cases rely on handouts or even food banks.
Yes, even framing the ‘tax issue’ this way will make some prickly – and that really is the point.
The UK Tax code is today thought to be over 21,000 pages and 10 million words long, giving everyone the distinct impression that the subject of how the bill for government action and delivery gets paid for (ostensibly on our behalf), needs to be tailored specially to everyone as if bespoke governance is the only kind of governance that’s really fair to everyone.
This is ‘The day when Britons stop paying tax and start putting their earnings into their own pocket’. Or alternatively, the final day of the year when every penny we’ve earned goes to the government – if we start counting on January 1st, which was this year (2025) calculated as being June 11th by the Adam Smith Institute.
The reason I’m using this figure isn’t to upset anyone by drawing attention to the fact that as an average, we arguably all work for no other reason than to keep the wheels of government turning every year for at least 5 months.
I’m doing so because it may be the only way to look at the relationship all taxpayers have with the government in the same way. Given how easy it is to get sidetracked by the question of what everyone earns!
June 11th 2025 was the 162nd day of the year (as 2025 is not a leap year), and with 365 days in 2025, this means that in comparative terms, people are giving over 44% of their earnings (162 divided by 365 days), before they can even begin to think about what they need to spend money on, in turn before anything that they might actually want.
For a moment, let’s forget the amount anyone is actually earning for themselves, as we know that some have considerably more than others, whilst many just don’t have anywhere near what it takes to live without struggling to make ends meet, and then take it as read that everyone is giving up 44 Pence in every Pound they earn (£0.44).
After realising just how much of everything we do have taken from wages and then what we pay for that includes some form of tax, it doesn’t take much to realise that government or rather the model of government that we have is simply unaffordable, unsustainable and that we must do everything we can to find a different and much better way to pay for the things that we share.
Regrettably, the complexity of rules and regulations supposedly there to benefit and protect us don’t stop at taxation.
One of the reasons that every part of life, that doesn’t already relate to the question of financial affordability in some way, seems so difficult or restricted, is because our freedoms and therefore our independence from the system and government are already being actively controlled in many different silent rules that have deliberately been put there using the excuses like health and safety, and protecting us or someone in some way.
Even if we aren’t actively being followed around by a police officer all the time the fact that we are aware of and abiding by these rules usually adds up to being the same.
Government isn’t what it should or was ever supposed to be
Whilst many would actually like to see the wealthiest in our society directly paying at least 44% of their income to the government to help run everything outside of our front doors, we still need to keep some perspective when it comes to the obvious question we will come back to in a moment about who pays and begin with the question, ‘Does government actually work?’
Government certainly functions. Even the deepest or most vocally critical of what government in the UK does will find it difficult to argue otherwise.
Because no matter the organisation or service that comes under the rather large umbrella of government, they all continue to do something. Even if they are not delivering what we might agree to be the correct results. And that’s the only reason it can be argued that it all works.
However, functioning and succeeding are not the same thing.
The time is long overdue that we all took a very hard and questioning look at every part of government and decided what, if anything, public services should or could be; just exactly where the scope and reach of government should end, and then and only then, what many believe to be the most important question of all, ‘How whatever government and the public sector does is paid for and by whom’.
Whilst it remains the case that there are services, infrastructure and even public facing roles that every modern society needs to be provided by the community, so that everyone can have universal experiences and opportunities which will always be the same, no matter who, where or what you are, the practical approach to not-for-profit service delivery – which this really should in almost all cases be, is not the same as the public sector and system of governance that we have today.
Every part of government and the public sector that we have today is focused on delivering (political) and therefore biased agendas which will inevitably advantage some people more than others in some way. Or is all about the jobs, terms and conditions for whoever the incumbent employees are who currently have the jobs.
There have always been politicians, officers and suppliers who for many reasons have chosen to advantage themselves in some way, if and where they failed to have the integrity to exercise their roles properly. And regrettably, it’s the position of trust we gave them all that enabled them to behave in such questionable ways.
Yet even more shocking reality that we all face today is that the whole public sector and everything that runs within it is now dysfunctional in terms of delivery in some of the most critical ways.
It has only been able to become this way because decisions have either been made (or not made) at the very top by people who really should have known better, and whose actions have allowed or facilitated everything that serves the public unwinding in this way.
Money before People
Regrettably, like so many areas of life today, the role of money – which stretches far beyond the scope of the tax question that we’ve already considered – is also the key element within the dysfunctionality of government and public services across the UK. Because the poor leaders that we have are obsessed with the idea that the only way any problem can and will be fixed is by having enough money to spend – no matter where it comes from, which is itself is these days even better for some politicians who dare not do anything which could restrict what they are already committed to spend.
Idealism and agendas cost a lot of money. Because their implementation requires the creation of systems, rules and infrastructure somebody wants but nobody needs.
The very perverse outcome from decades of government and the public sector serving itself, its people and whoever or whatever influences them, is that the changes that have been made in every way imaginable to support this are now costing too much for either the Taxpayer or government itself to sustain.
We have a VERY BIG problem. Because nobody in government or who wishes to form one either can or will be honest about the true depth and breadth of the mess that the UK is now in.
With Tax rises thought to be well on their way this coming Autumn, the reality that too many of us face is the 44% (or probably much more) that we are already contributing to this public sector black hole through so many of the things that we buy, pay for or earn, are set to keep going up.
All to cover the exploding costs of incompetence, waste and the furtherance of playing up to what are very dangerous egos. Because somewhere in amongst all of this the point has been lost that government does not and never did have the right to exist over the people that it was created to represent.
For any kind of government to be unrepresentative of the people it represents, would by its very nature and intended purpose mean that it represents someone or something else.
Money: The drug wrecking everything to enrich and empower the few
The way that money actually works, how it is controlled and worst but not least, how it is actually created at will, is the truth that sits behind everything bad, that few of us will willingly believe.
It’s much easier to believe that it is all good rather than even having the potential to be bad – even when almost everyone can see the destruction that money or the lack of it is causing to everyone in some way or form.
At the heart of the money tree and its root and branch system sits the mechanisms that supposedly fund government, but actually do so by doing everything to help grow the volume of money that is in circulation, so that the public spending – and the only way that politicians know how to get themselves out of trouble, can leverage ‘growth’ so that the depth and scope of the real problem can be hidden from public view.
Unfortunately for all of us, the exponential growth of the ‘money’ that has entered circulation, particularly since the responses of government to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Covid Pandemic of 2020, has wildly contributed to the inflationary spiral that accompanies such an expansion of available cash.
The creation of money that doesn’t relate to anything else like productivity or output devalues the money and incomes that normal people already have, as well as what they have the ability to earn.
It does so at breakneck speed whilst the real value of everything is funnelled towards those who control and benefit from what is a fully legal, legitimised but nevertheless completely corrupt system that appears real, because they have typically become millionaires and billionaires in the process.
Put simply, the lowest paid and most vulnerable now have zero chance of ever being able to earn enough to live independently of benefits, charity, debt or worse.
For as long as the money madness continues, the bubble containing all of those who are branded as being a drain on the system will rapidly continue to expand.
The leadership void or black hole
When a country has such questionable leadership, and has done for the period of time that the UK has, it wouldn’t be unfair for any of us to be asking, ‘How did we get them?’ and ‘How did they get to where they are?’.
However, as we all need to realise, very few of us do ask these questions or indeed any questions that are like them. And because we don’t, each time an election takes place locally or nationally, we are, as a majority, making the same mistakes over and over again.
We are chewing at the very same dogs dinner with the bits just wrapped differently with words, rosettes and faces – all hiding the same miserable self-interested and dangerously incompetent content that always delivers outcomes that are the same.
Because we have a very bad, self-destructive habit of going along with the idea that the political fairies come along and give us all a genuine choice at election time – as all good democracies surely would, we have not only accepted that government after government and council after council has worked on all of our behalf. We have also jumped into an elephant trap of our own making that tells us these same fairies will deliver the politicians to choose from at the next election, who will sort out and solve the very same mess that they and their own kind created (with a little help from their friends) in the first place.
Sadly, there are no exceptions to the reality that we must face that there are no real leaders in politics today.
The so-called leadership we see, and what the people we identify as leaders say, is much more likely to be aligned with us hearing and seeing whatever we need to fuel our own confirmation biases than it either is or ever will be about the solutions and outcomes that we might not be ready to hear about, but nonetheless actually need.
Victim or Victimiser: There is no longer an in-between
As a society and culture, we are collectively suffering what might be the worst type of addiction of all. Simply because it is majority of us are addicted rather than the few.
Meaning that that same majority is completely out of touch with the realities of what that addiction does and will remain so, until the supply runs out – which is where all those who cannot afford to live independently within the current system have or are beginning to find out.
Money, or rather the way that money is used by those who control the system – and that means government and politicians, who are very much under their control too, has become the key factor in every equation and consideration in our lives.
The role of money and its reach has dehumanised everything to the point where money and the power, influence and control it is perceived to give at every level of life has become more important than the value of life and community itself.
Few realise just how their lives are completely at the mercy of the ability to spend, borrow and achieve the momentary of transitory hit that this money centric, Moneyocracy we inhabit demands of everyone and which is enforced by the barrage of non stop marketing and remote, typical digital pressure which comes at us constantly and demands that we all conform.
Money; what it does, what it can do and what it says about you is the qualification and gatekeeper that runs through every part of functional life and if you are in, you are in and if you are out, you really are all the way out and fully at the mercy of those who continue to be ‘in’.
The tragedy of the system is the ruthless and methodical way that human behaviour has been used against the masses by the few and the experts they pay who understand it.
The sweeties and trinkets that have been flowing towards for decades have only been bettered by what has appeared to be the endless ability to secure more and more credit to buy it with, all the time becoming more and more essential to secure as real earnings and wealth have been stripped by the printing of all this extra ‘pretend’ or non existent money that even relatively wealthy people have no chance of keeping up with.
The irony is that those of us who continue to believe we benefit from what the establishment is doing and therefore acquiesce or go along with it are – through our actions – making those who cannot the victims.
All for no better reason than this whole situation could not exist without the elites treating the masses as a resource that is not real. But is instead just like oil, coal, precious metals, forests, farms, land and even animals – and just something else for those who ‘own them’ to exploit.
We all need to contribute to what we share in life. But real life cannot continue if we are required to contribute everything we have
Whilst we must all accept it is correct for everyone to contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of the systems and infrastructure that serve us all, from the moment we step onto the pavement or road outside of our homes, what we share is not and never should become more important than the right to have a fully independent, functioning and self supported life experience.
The system that we have discussed is at breaking point and cannot continue as it has, or as it is today.
Those in charge don’t know how to do anything other than borrow or tax us. And as the system can no longer sustain the borrowing that idealism and agendas have made necessary, the current government are now looking at everything they can tax beyond everything they already do.
One way or another, the system is going to collapse. Because we are all living unsustainably in a system that itself is unsustainable and at the centre of which is a plague which is the absence of real leadership, replaced with what is instead no better than incompetent management that makes it the most unsustainable part of it all.
Real life and a money-centric economy are mutually exclusive outcomes
Government already costs us way too much – even at 44%.
That’s before we even begin to consider the work and additional value to public service that charities and other nonprofit organisations bring, that we are all in one way or another contributing to too.
The whole model of economics needs to be restructured and redeveloped so that it supports life, rather than feeding off it like the giant parasite that the financial system and the role that government plays in it now is.
A realistic level for everyone to contribute to ‘the community’ would be around 10% – without any form of exception for anyone.
We should also be considering the added requirement that everyone able to work also contributes the equivalent of 10% of their working time and the skills and experience they offer, to help make our communities, their governance and infrastructure work.
Thereby creating real buy-in and ownership for what we all share, whilst drastically cutting the scope and influence of an out-of-control sector, and the ballooning costs that are actually paying for lots of agendas and idealistic ideas, but very little that is actually about people and certainly nothing that’s doing everyone equally any good.
The identity, qualification and process of finding good leaders
Good public leaders, public representatives and public servants, would not facilitate or contribute to the creation, implementation and furtherance of agendas, ideologies and idealism that doesn’t serve the genuine best interests of those who they have been elected, appointed or recruited to serve.
Yet we have been experiencing decades of exactly that. And we have no hope that this will change if we continue to rely on a system that needs to change giving us the leaders who will then do the right thing when it comes to the delivery of that change.
Contrary to accepted thought, we do not need money to play the role across society that it has been deliberately engineered to do.
Power and control are certainly not a gift that should be secured within the hands of a distant, faceless, unanswerable few who we will never meet and whether intended or not, are treating humanity as a resource and no better than a numbers game that they can do with as they like. All as if they are now, as the result of decades of manipulating the system and bending it to their will, the new gods of everything with everyone else’s destiny theirs and only theirs to decide.
The truth that few see is that the centralisation and push for remote control of everything that globalisation and everything that walks alongside it has been, has been the active and complete restructuring of our society and culture, so that nothing can or will work without the say so and direction of those who make all the decisions.
None of this was accidental. Locality, local relationships, local businesses, local supply chains, local decision making and everything that goes with it promotes sovereignty and independence. It encourages and grows a living environment and cultural model that is good for everyone other than those who want to advantage themselves and be in power or control.
Meanwhile, the downsides of centralisation and everything that goes with it are the for every one of us to see.
However, despite the various attempts, compelling rhetoric and highly credible narratives that work so well when playing up to the addiction for material living that we currently have, there is an alternative and much better alternative to running life and everything that we and our communities need. And the real upside of this real alternative is that it centres completely around putting normal people and our local communities back in control.
The fact that generations of political leaders and those they favour or are influenced by have misused and abused their position to create a system with faux legitimacy – simply by legalising immorality to make it appear moral and therefore unquestionable, doesn’t make it right. And it certainly doesn’t become right, just because those in power today continue to insist and behave as if it is so.
We have a legitimate right to hold power and control over our own destiny.
The power of collective decision making should sit as part of a new structure of governance within our communities, amongst people and representatives who we ourselves select and know we can trust.
A moral obligation arguably also exists to reset the entire system and the various devices such as money and the tools of governance the existing system uses, so that we once again bring the focus of everything in life back to people, to humanity and to creating the best kind of environment that we can to ensure that every person has the life experience that everyone – and not just a selective few should have.
However, nobody else will step up or step in to do this for us – no matter how compelling or necessary this might seem.
Whether addicted or not, the choice and the steps necessary to return power to people and to our communities, and with it the creation of a genuine democracy we can all trust and believe in, are ours and only ours to take.
Nobody in the public sphere today can or will do this. None of them will give us back the influence that is rightly ours. Because they all imagine themselves as leaders who can only lead by having absolute control over everyone and everything else.
We don’t have a roadmap agreed for the future.
But there are plenty of ideas we can share about the outcomes that will serve all of us equally well and in a balanced, fair and just way.
This is where the conversation must start.
The one thing we can be sure of is that real leaders do actually lead. But also know that it is real equality, balance, fairness and justice that applies equally to everyone where the pathway to everything good for everyone really starts.
Adam Tugwell 