Tag: The Future

The step from written blogs to filming videos and publishing online…

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for following if you are a subscriber to my Blog and a very big welcome if you are a guest and have found me as you have been having a look on the net.

I’ve been writing blogs and publishing books for around 12 years now, since I was still sitting as a local councillor in Gloucestershire and started off writing about some of the issues that were important for my constituents near Tewkesbury. You can find these on their own Blog HERE.

Stepping away from frontline politics in 2015, after choosing to put the people who elected me first over a massive planning issue decision in 2013 that has affected the whole area ever since, I’ve been on a bit of a journey that made the first leap into books in 2018, when I wrote and published ‘How to Get Elected’ for independent candidates thinking about running in elections, and then found myself with a growing focus on future policy when I wrote and published ‘Levelling Level’ at the end of March 2022, then going on to write a whole series of books about how everything could be changed and the part that we all have the opportunity to play.

As technology has moved on, anyone who writes regularly will have become increasingly aware that beyond the people who are already attuned and looking for whatever it may be that we have to offer, our potential audience is increasingly likely to prefer watching a video that shares our messages, rather than reading through our missives, no matter if it were easy for them to be found.

About 2 years ago, I picked up a DJI Mini camera to see if I could make the transition or rather expand my online offering to YouTube and video platforms beyond.

To be honest, it didn’t feel that easy and although I published a few films on another channel, it just seemed easier to keep writing – especially as my focus seemed to be driven by creating and publishing what has now become a long list of books.

Reaching the point where it felt like I have covered all the things that I didn’t originally realise that I had set out to say, I recently found myself going back and beginning to review my books.

Now any of you who self-publish and don’t have the luxury of editorial help or that second pair of eyes when you first publish will understand what a traumatic experience this can actually be! I am however comforted by the reality that anyone who is genuinely interested in the content will not be looking at grammar and long sentences – no matter how unforgiving the general inhabitants of the online universe can be!

Going through this process made me appreciate that the books are all well and good and once people want to understand the topics better – as I remain confident that in time they will, it might be time to dig out that rather cool DJI and see what a refocus of my creative and publishing efforts might make of it all now.

About a fortnight ago, I set up @TugsRamblings as a new YouTube channel and quickly got to work.

The idea being that as a rule, I will film a talk as I walk or ‘ramble’ in potentially more ways than one, and that the film will hopefully come across as if the viewer is walking alongside.

Not the easiest thing to imagine for me, when the best angle from the camera is looking down and I am 6’5”!!!

All the same grumbles quickly came back to the surface, ranging from ‘I ummmm too much’, to ‘What the hell do I do if people keep appearing and I have to stop and can’t edit the film?’ and of course, ‘Will I be able to remember all the things that I need to say?’

As I write this blog to share what I have been doing so far, I’ve just uploaded video number 14 and am hopeful that they are improving all the time.

The good thing about all of this is that video creation is a learning experience at every step of the way. I’ve already learned a lot more than I knew two weeks ago and I feel sure that my knowledge can only improve!

Please drop by and take a look. Your support with likes and subscribes would be greatly appreciated, as would any questions you might have where answers could help you or might help others in respect of the topics and issues that I generally cover.

Best wishes,

Adam ‘Tugs’ Tugwell

PS. Please find a link to my first video on @TugsRamblings below!

The stupidity of our politicians and the void of leadership they created has opened the door to a very dark reality. Will it step in?

We were once free to ignore or mock the presence of voices such as Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson. We jumped on the let’s-call-it-extremism bandwagon that the mainstream narrative afforded us, regrettably at the expense of precluding different opinions that could have done us a lot of good, if we had the good sense to listen and hear them long before now.

We don’t have that luxury anymore. Anyone would be a fool to ignore the danger of some ‘new’ movement quickly being fashioned across the restless and frustrated corners of our society, that will be more than happy up step into the void that has been created by the absence of genuine political leadership for such a long time.

The decision of our politicians not to listen, rather than using public office to do whatever the hell they and their political party’s want hasn’t come without a heavy, steadily accumulating cost.

The ignorance of a brewing undercurrent of very normal people who are sick and tired of being the butt end of every public policy our politicians now deliver, whilst policies that run contrary to what would be good for everyone are relentlessly pursued, means that we may soon reach a tipping point when everyday British people will simply say ‘no more’.

Whilst it has become popular to blame racism for any view or thought which can be considered contra-narrative, the problems caused by the failure of the progressive multicultural project are only part of a much bigger, quickly growing problem.

It has become a cultural norm for politicians to engage in what is probably best called political gaslighting, where the mainstream media adeptly help them create the idea in our minds that anyone who suffers from any one of the growing injustices of our time is suffering alone and that everything is rosy for everyone else.

However, the victims of useless politicians are not alone. People are realising this in ever greater numbers and those responsible are on a fast track to being found out.

Even more of us are going to realise that the cost of living crisis, explosive inflation of the prices of the essentials and basics that everyone needs, the collapse of public services, and everything that real people believe to be wrong, but the narrative tells us is right, are definitely wrong and have been created deliberately, through someone else’s incompetence or design.

These things didn’t just happen to any of us in a way that politicians suggest. These are wrongs that weren’t unavoidable. And even the merest hint that we brought it all upon ourselves is not only unjust; it is an outright lie.

As more and more realise this, people are going to join the groups and movements that some very angry people lead, with consequences that could quickly be disastrous for us all.

Not least of all, because there isn’t currently any kind of sensible or reasoned choice that actually represents anything different to what we have already got.

Regrettably, it would take much bigger politicians than the ones we have already got, to recognise their own folly and for them all to step aside so that they can be replaced by genuine public representatives. Good politicians and leaders who genuinely understand, accept and are motivated by the reality that we elect politicians to make decisions which will have outcomes that are always in the best interests of us all.

It’s anyone’s guess how long we have got and what event or issue will prove to be the last straw.

However, change is coming. And when push comes to shove, we can only hope that Lady Luck is shining, and we have leaders available who will step in and do their best for us, rather than doing only what is best for themselves.

Image created with Microsoft Designer

Sustainable Agriculture is part of the pathway to UK Food Security. But it wont work well for anyone until it works for everyone in the same way

My focus on Agri politics and the mass of issues that surround UK Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and the growing problem of Food Poverty in the UK has made the past few months and my time at the Royal Agricultural University highly beneficial. Especially as I have began to look further and further outside my own social and professional circles to see if the troubling patterns that I already recognised, were evident in the same way elsewhere.

I have to be blunt and say that nothing I have experienced has given me any comfort. In all honesty, everything that I have seen has made me realise that the UKs Food Security and self-sustainability issues are significantly worse than I’d already concluded, and they are getting worse the whole time.

As you will have already read, Sustainability and Sustainable Agriculture are issues that are important to what I wish to share. However, the English language, the way that we multipurpose words and the obsession with subtext that most of us have, make communicating difficult issues that need to easily be grasped very difficult. Especially when alternative terms and their meanings can be used as a barrier that allow emotional ties to get in the way of progress and constructive dialogue.

There are very important distinctions to be made about Sustainable Farming in the context of what sustainability really is. Given that terms such as Regenerative Agriculture, Conservation Agriculture and Rewilding have been pushing their way into the Rural, Green, Environmental and Agricultural lexicon. As despite what should be very distinctive threads of commonality running throughout all of them, the differences between them and more importantly what everyone believes to be the most important priorities of each of them, are endlessly getting in the way.

Misunderstanding, misinterpreting and misrepresenting key benefits and issues is preventing everyone coming together to build upon shared commonality to identify and implement ways of working for the future that are meaningful and beneficial for everyone involved.

To add to the complication of addressing these issues, there is also a need to focus on methods and thinking that are likely to seem counterintuitive in a way that requires many of the most logical and business minded people that we could meet, to think about a future that looks very different to how it does today. A comfort zone we are resistant to leaving where every system, policy and story we encounter tell us all that the basics of everything that we accept without thinking, are always set to remain the same.