Tag: UK

Thank you for your support – Here’s the best way to get value from Levelling Level:

Before anything, a big thank you to everyone who has visited Levelling Level here (in its Blog form) or has already downloaded the Book.

Since I began to publish the Book broken down into blogs last Tuesday, the number of visits has been more than I had expected. I have really appreciated the likes received from some of you, that have reflected a lot of interest in pages such as Food: What we need and The Basic Living Standard. This has been rather heartening, bearing in mind that creating and then maintaining The Basic Living Standard is what Levelling Level is ultimately all about.

Clearly, many of the ideas and suggestions I have made in Levelling Level stand up on their own at first glance, to those of us who are already receptive in any relevant way to the need for change.

Yet I am acutely aware that the complexity of the problems that we all face together are such that we cannot and will not succeed in fixing them or implementing real solutions that will work, unless we take a very different approach to the one that has led us here. We must seek to address each and every problem in its own right, but also in relation to each and every other problem, one-by-one and one-and-all, as never before.

The fact that even people who have a vested interest in rejecting a Basic Living Standard do at least unconsciously appreciate how it would work was illustrated very well to me just yesterday, when I went out for an early morning walk. Bumping into a very successful business owner who I have got to know by passing the time of day, the subject of us not meeting over the past 6 weeks came up and I told him that I had been writing and publishing the Levelling Level Book.

Their rejection of the idea that everyone should have a fighting chance of success as a stepping off point, instead of so many of us having lives that revolve only around a lifetime of fighting to keep our heads above water (and in many cases failing, as the system has developed to so easily allow us to do) was palpable, just because they had experienced a very challenging start to life.

Once we had passed the accusation that I could only propose such things because of the privileged position that I now had, and that had been put to bed by referencing the back story that I have had, we very quickly moved into a number of suggestions that they were making – which are a natural follow through of where we really are all now heading – but which from their current perspective, they were adamant would never be practical or work.

As things still appear to be for many people today, they certainly appear to have a point. The intrinsic values crisscrossing society are all based on what we have or what we can get after all.

In fact, before starting only to touch the nuts and bolts of what Levelling Level is really about, I had already warned them that they might find what I was about to say controversial in some way. And that’s why I have written the whole proposal, suggestion or philosophy that is Levelling Level in the way that I have.

Levelling Level is about the present, immediate and longer-term future of my Country, The UK. But the principles and suggestions are relevant to wherever you live or may be.

Levelling Level is written as a book that journeys through how we got to where we are today. It covers the role that events such as Brexit, Covid and Ukraine have played as the catalysts of a massive change that has been in development over decades. It then discusses how we will have to change the way that we live and everything that we are used to in order to survive and manage through the challenges and difficulties that we will experience in many forms as events force everything we know to change.

Levelling Level reaches its conclusion discussing how we can harness the learning from the experience that this challenging time will provide us to mould a better way of living for ourselves, whilst ensuring that there is a genuine safety net in place to ensure that nobody is from that point ever left behind.

Through the lens of the very material and money-oriented world that still surrounds us, the numbers of people receptive to the change now required may be growing. But for the majority, that need for that change will not be accepted or real, until events have led them personally to experience the pain that lies ahead.

When that pain arrives, it is essential that we harness the power of an opportunity to change life for the better that can only come at that flashpoint or seminal moment. A point in time when everyone will know and accept that the way we have been living and treating each other is unsustainable and can no longer go on.

From this perspective alone, I will make a suggestion: That any of you who are already receptive to the level of change that events and circumstances will soon force us all to embrace, will benefit most from reading Levelling Level in its original book form.

Sharing Levelling Level has never been about making money or charging any fees. The Book for Kindle is modestly priced, and I will be happy to provide a PDF copy of the text by e-mail, Free Of Charge, in receipt to any legitimate request. (Please email levellinglevel@gmail.com )

To get the best value from reading Levelling Level in its blog form without charge, please visit the web version using PC/Mac/Laptop. Please use the index on the right of the page to navigate from top to bottom, what are the equivalent parts/pages/sections of the Levelling Level Book.

Levelling Level is linked on Twitter (@levellinglevel) and Facebook (@levellinglevel) and I would really appreciate your follows, likes, shares and your taking the time to ask questions or make comments that might be helpful to all of us in some way.

Thanks again for reading. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Adam Tugwell

Sat in a Starbucks in Cheltenham, UK. Monday 11 April 2022

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Levelling Level | True Equality is found at the level of self-sustainability for all

You cannot make life better for anyone by only attempting to improve the environment around us, calling it levelling up.

You cannot make life better for anyone by attempting to force everyone to believe they are exactly the same, when you cannot change the way people think and so, the only way that you can make everyone appear to be the same is by levelling down.

In the pages of Levelling Level, I have attempted to lift the large rock that covers all of the problems within ‘the system’ or the way that the UK currently operates, that so many of us feel and experience in our daily lives, but at the same time, cannot seem to see.

I have talked about some of the key solutions, new ways of working and new ways of thinking or ways of living similar to them that we will soon have to consider and are likely to be forced by circumstances to adopt anyway.

That is, IF we genuinely desire things to change and wish to experience a world that is as fair to us as we perceive it being fair to all.

Levelling Level has been written from the perspective that it will be read only by you. However, the conclusions, solutions and suggestions are intended to benefit everyone as individuals, as neighbourhoods, communities and collectively as the United Kingdom that together we are.

Levelling Level | The Internet and Parallel Worlds

Despite a Bill already working its way through the UK Parliament that is overtly designed to deal with issues surrounding how big tech platforms operate and work, the reality is that as is the case with most things, our politicians have only been making lots of noise about the specific issues they believe help them to play to the current crowd. Meanwhile they have deliberately avoided creating, developing or changing any legislation that would be truly fair and beneficial to everyone whilst providing a level of functionality that actually works as it should in real life.

With corporate interests and the role of money as the motivator being dealt with as part of Levelling Level in many different ways, there are three key areas in relation to the role of the Internet, where legislators will need to legislate thoughtfully and effectively.

These three areas are key to Levelling Level, so that the new internet – an internet that is unlikely to resemble what it does today, in a just few years’ time, is a safe place for everyone. One that supports and benefits real life, rather than providing the alternative that is open to abuse and is currently a danger to just about everyone.

Levelling Level | Digital Currency, Crypto, DeFi

Digital or crypto currencies will not survive in their current form.

Like the system that cryptocurrencies were created with the best intentions to try and override, it is simply the belief that people have, or the way that people think about cryptocurrencies today that appear to make them work.

The cryptocurrencies that you can buy or trade today may be worth a lot of money. But like the money they might replace, they have absolutely no value at all.

In reality, digital currencies that exist today are as flawed as the FIAT money system itself. They are based on no real value or tangible holding.

It is literally the belief of those who invest in or use the existing blockchain currencies that make them work.

The moment anything happens to shatter the belief in today’s versions of digital currency – as you can be certain that it will – these cryptocurrencies will return to their intrinsic value. That value is zero or nil.

The new ‘local’ way of living will allow the creation of new digital currencies based on real value that is defined by the community that runs it.

That value will be pinned or anchored to the value of input and output (labour, skills, experience) and the true value of the locally produced goods that people genuinely need to live.

We cannot and must not even try to return to a pyramid or hierarchical system that is skewed to allow prices at the foundation of our society to be dictated by actions at the top.

We could very easily and very quickly come to experience a fully functioning system of digital currencies that are locally linked. Currencies that become interchangeable and exchangeable with others, because of how the basic value of input and essential goods are defined.

Levelling Level | Changing the UK Benefits System

As with the case of taxation, the benefits system in the UK is far more complicated than it either needs to be or should be.

Yes, we should certainly have a system available to support those who cannot work, or for whatever reason cannot genuinely get a job that they are experienced or able to do.

What a benefits system should never do however, is just to provide an alternative way of living, or a way of living that is in effect a lifestyle choice for those who see it as an option.

With The Basic Living Standard functioning and in place, work and the self-sufficiency that goes with it will make the benefits and welfare bubble a very different place to exist.

Those who are there and need benefits of any kind must be supported and supported to the level of the Basic Living Standard. But that support must be given on the terms of wider society and not on the terms which makes that dependency feel like an attractive choice.

Levelling Level | Your influence is yours to give to Politicians and is for Politicians to answer to

We cannot all be politicians. In fact, very few of us would even want to be politicians. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be accessible to us, especially when they are making the decision on our behalf that affect us all.

We all have an equal stake in society. In our communities. In our Country at large.

Contrary to what those who benefit from us thinking otherwise may believe, money, wealth and power do not make anyone more worthy than anyone else, and they certainly should not have access to more power or control.

Levelling Level | We never ask the right questions when it comes to UK Politicians and the Establishment

Top-down or centralised hierarchies depend on everyone other than those who benefit from the structures not being interested in the real detail of what is going on. They thrive when we aren’t asking the right questions about who really are the main beneficiaries of the process that is unfolding round us.

We quite literally have a rather dangerous habit of simply accepting that the changes around us are actually needed, and that they will be beneficial or work better for us all.

The best example is that of how we are all being manipulated into thinking that power is being given back to us when it isn’t, is through the creation of Metropolitan and Regional Mayors.

In reality, the levels of government already exist where the decisions that these very political roles will be gifted with should in fact be taken. That is what parish and town councils, borough and district councils, and what county councils are already there for.

The big budgets will always be controlled from above, and the function of these unnecessary roles relies on sucking power and influence away from the lowest tiers of government, where the most risk to politicians from being exposed to real democracy is involved.

More layers of government mean more layers of insulation to protect those at the top.

You may have seen how messages get changed if an instruction or information is given to one person, and then passed on to another who didn’t hear the first conversation, with the process then being repeated several times.

The way that a multilayered system of government works when it is as highly politicised as the structure of government in the UK now is, means that it is incredibly easy for the real purpose or intent of overarching public policy to become confused – not always intentionally, but through stupidity  – with something that will actually work, once it is implemented at the bottom of what in some cases can be a long and convoluted chain.

Rest assured that if those at the top are being insulated from risk to themselves and their positions by how messages can be obscured on their way down, whilst being taken up passionately by those who believe they are doing their job, the reality is that the information and feedback that should be informing public policy and really making a difference through public structures that comes from the bottom, is certainly not reaching the top, or being taken seriously on the rare occasion that it does.

Levelling Level | The ongoing power-grab from useless and controlling UK Politicians

We have been conditioned historically to give what is an assumed deference to anyone who we consider to be in a position of influence or power.

No matter how ridiculous the people we find ourselves showing that deference to may seem be, the fact that they are in those positions of influence or power, somehow and for some reason unknown makes us willfully blind to quite how stupid such people can be. It certainly obscures the reality that underpins how self-serving and focused upon themselves they actually are.

Yes, we have had some great leaders and great people in positions of influence across society in the past.

But as time has gone on, more and more have them have been all about themselves. It naturally follows that when you have that many insecure people with power who simply shouldn’t have it, they will work together to consolidate that position and stay exactly where they are.

The easiest way to consolidate the power that poor leaders have when they are the top, is to bring more and more of that power towards the centre and to them – or what is in reality the top. They deliberately take it away from the people who they condescendingly believe aren’t equipped to handle that responsibility properly, but in reality, they see as a distinct threat to their power, their control and to themselves.

Levelling Level | The importance of Community in all things

Our distraction is no accident

If you want people to forget who they are, what they want or what they need, give them bread and circuses.

Surprisingly, these words have been around since Roman times. They reflect one of the key ways of thinking that cynical and poor leaders use to prevent people from revolting and engaging in civil unrest, when things are not going well or as they really should.

During the Covid Pandemic, we were repeatedly misled by the Johnson Government and its ‘nudge unit’, that used behavioural science, to play around with the basic fears that operate often at an unconscious level inside our heads.

By keeping everyone, or rather, the majority distracted from focusing on their own inability to lead, by keeping everyone focused on what we were being told was everyone’s duty to fight for everyone else’s life whilst putting our own lives on hold, they have so far managed to walk away from crippling the UK financially and destroying many people’s futures scot-free.

The programming that the government and the media uses only works, because of the way that our society now works.

People don’t interact with others from an early age in the many different ways that they used to. So, when it comes to learning what’s real, what’s unreal, what makes sense, or what its in our best interests to do, unless we listen without question to family and the people who are close to us when we consider everything, the politicians and the media that support them have within all of us, an open book.

The Establishment is pulling out all the stops to maintain the narrative that everything is fine

In the Terence Trent D’arby (Sananda Maitreya) song ‘If you all get to Heaven’, sits the immortal line ‘Old men’s cigars puff up the wars to protect their fuck ups again’.

Whilst one of the alternative truths growing considerable traction in recent years has been that the United States has in effect created wars around the globe, simply so that the corporate interests that fund the politicians can keep profiting, the reality is that war has been used as a very costly distraction and as a way of taking attention away from the public, from what is really going on around us all at home.

As I write this in early 2022, Russia has just invaded Ukraine. It is already clear that Western Governments are going to use the crisis as a way to cover up the damage that they are responsible for. Prolonged mismanagement that has led to all the problems that we are facing now.

When people at the top have gained so much through a system that exists on the basis that it exploits the greater part of the population without them realising that they are being used, it is in the interests of those people at the top to ensure that the  truth never comes out a) so that they don’t get blamed when it fails and b) so that no one will attempt to stop them doing all that they can to return the whole system to how it previously worked – even when they are too stupid to realise that it is now impossible to do.

De-Globalisation: The End of Globalisation is already underway

Globalisation and the model of global business and supply chains that existed at the end of 2019 – before the Covid Pandemic hit us, no longer exists as it did then, in either functional or operational terms.

In the same way that our system of government and the political system that supposedly drives it has built itself by putting sticking plaster on top of sticking plaster when it comes to public policy and building it into the dysfunctional system that exists today, the way that industry and the global business system has been developed has also been without thought for the consequences or impact at even the closest degrees of separation.

What we have ended up with is a so-called ‘Global Economy’ that is in fact a house of cards that has little in terms of foundations and is already on the verge of collapse in many different ways.

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.

Basic Foods

We do not need the wide range, nor the wide variety of foods that are available to us today, in order to survive.

In fact, the majority, if not all of the food that any of us require, to have a very healthy and nutritious diet, can be produced, provided or is already available to us all from not only within the UK, but in all likelihood from within the local areas around our homes.

The prospect of a ‘meat and two veg’ kind of lifestyle may sound abhorrent to many. But if you are hungry and have very little of anything, a good meal of anything will make you happy – if it is something that you can afford to buy and to prepare.

The thing that will surprise many, is that the issues we face with obesity, food allergies or food intolerances and the rise in many of the illnesses that people suffer as they go through life, are all related to the foods we eat and the way that we eat them. We have been actively encouraged to move away from very simple and straightforward foods, to highly processed versions that rely on many additional ingredients and that often involve massive supply chains in some way.

If food is grown or produced locally, and then only preparation which is strictly necessary is carried out locally too, the need for packaging, preservatives and further processing is VERY limited indeed.

We may not be living in a time where life can be put in a time machine and literally transported back to when we had a butcher, fishmonger, baker, saddler, blacksmith or any other specialist provider of the basic goods or services we need, located in shops or premises around the village green or in the Town Marketplace. But the reality of what we actually need AND what will be good for us all, will be a result that in 21st Century Terms, ends up being practically the same.

As quickly as possible and in order to alleviate the unnecessary pain that will come from delay, we need to refocus the priorities of food production to the shortest journey and shortest time possible ‘from farm to fork’.

Where possible, farms and farmers should be encouraged and supported to become able to make the foods and goods they produce available at either their own gate, or to work closely and collaboratively with other local producers and retailers through localised cooperative systems to ensure that any necessary supply chain is a local as it can be.

The technology and understanding exists for all ancillary services such as abattoirs and such like to exist at the highest standards possible on a much smaller and much more localised scale than ever before, and it is here that the real support for UK Farmers, Growers and the Fishing Industry from government and our communities should now be.

If Boris can secure a deal that the UK can walk away from without selling out Northern Ireland too, there will be no legitimate reason for any MP not to support it

Whilst there is some legitimate concern that there could be EU choreography and smoke and mirrors involved, the news that talks over a ‘deal’ following Boris Johnson’s meeting with Leo Varadkar yesterday is at least some cause to feel hopeful that the Brexit saga could come to an end.

Whether you are a Brexit purist like Nigel Farage or an absolutist Remainer like Jo Swinson, the fact is that getting any arrangement in place with the Parliamentary numbers as they currently are will be impossible – irrespective of whether the outcome can be considered to be wrong or right.

The important, indeed vital ingredients of any arrangement with the EU must be that the UK can unilaterally walk away from any arrangement at any time, and that Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom is not in anyway compromised or used as a bargaining chip.

The British People are at best already highly suspicious of everything that this Parliament is doing and has done.

But if a ‘deal’ should be on the table which is acceptable to both the EU and the Irish Republic incorporating all of the above, the Remain-collective-Opposition will be taking their intransigence the extreme if they should then step in and stop that ‘deal’ for what will only then be seen as their own dubious purposes.

Equally as bad however, would be the failure of the purist Brexiteers to discount the possibilities that will come from such s giant leap forward, simply because progress of this kind would remove the liklehood that they themselves would ever gain elected office or power in any way that the Brexit argument is then involved.

We will not know for certain what concessions from Boris, the EU or the Irish Republic have been involved until the documented form of this ‘new deal’ has been exposed to daylight.

But for the sake of trying to rescue what’s left of our democracy before it really is too late, it would be the right thing to do for all sides and everyone involved to accept that moving to the next step can only be achieved by a compromise – as long as it clearly and unequivocally respects those red lines.

Let’s all hope that things can finally be different.

Our Parliament has a majority of modern-day quislings as MPs and they are about to engineer the biggest betrayal of them all

img_2445As expected weeks and months ago, based on what has now become this Government’s oh-so-reliable behaviour patterns and pretty much guaranteed form, we today see Theresa May’s scare-game entering what some of us do hope will be its final death throws, but alas, probably just another stage before we see even more.

Back in the Autumn, there were many of us out here in the real world who still hoped that there were enough MPs left in this Parliament actually prepared to put duty the People above self-interest. Not just tell us that is what they will do.

Yet on the Eve of what may in time turn out to be one of the greatest Parliamentary decisions which has an impact right across the British way of life, it appears that the a baseline of doing what is actually right on behalf of the whole Electorate is now a quality and driver which is absent within the make-up of our MPs, save for what is clearly a remarkably small number and perhaps no more than just a few.

Perhaps the most frightening fact about all of the Machiavellian behaviour, manipulation and the flurry of ideas which are repeatedly being sold as the reinvention of the wheel – in so far as a ‘Brexit deal’ is concerned, is the reality that all this rubbish is having the effect of making Theresa May’s claim to have negotiated what the British People Voted for, look almost credible in a way which it would never do so, if such comparisons had never been born.

Yes, we should take very seriously the prospect that there is a strategy at work behind all of this. Because being bullied by fear as we were in the run up to the Referendum has been seriously overused by the Establishment and this Government, and it has required them to develop their web of deceit in order to make what is in effect one giant lie look highly plausible when compared to what appear to be all other forms.

What none of us should take seriously is the idea, suggestion or otherwise, that leaving the EU without ‘a deal’ is anything less than what the British People actually voted for. And that furthermore, that it will disadvantage the UK in anything other than the short and therefore immediate term – IF people should be put in charge who actually believe in the UK and what real opportunity is there to be used for.

Be under no illusion.

Theresa May’s ‘deal’ was, is not and never will be the Brexit that the British People Voted for.

This is a deal which if passed tomorrow or even in a few days or few weeks time will simply tie us back into a relationship which will always be one sided in terms of benefits to the EU. It is not ‘leaving’.

It is Brexit in name only with not even a meaningful tweak added since the point when anyone with any common sense realised that under May’s leadership, Brexit was never going to be the end result, no matter what she says or predicts as being yet to come.

But the ‘solutions’ put on offer by others, the ‘would be kings & queens’, such as Norway, Canada +++, Switzerland, the inappropriately named ‘People’s Vote’ or even a forced General Election offer nothing better in themselves. They do not even offer a direction of travel towards the position of UK Independence of the EU, whish is what the majority of British People instructed and therefore compelled our Parliament and successive Governments to deliver as the end result. To do whatever necessary to ensure that is what the UK becomes.

The relationship that these sell-out MPs and the Establishment has with the EU would perhaps be best viewed as one they would have as drunks with a pub landlord. One where the first sip of the drink tasted undeniably good, but then the damage being done took place without conscious intervention, both at the time they knew they were drinking and over the longer term when they didn’t realise they were.

The drinkers were blasé about the real impact as they got high in an unreal world that they were all the time paying for, whilst that landlord kept on supplying them with more.

The sensible drinker in such a pub would hear the inner voice when it says ‘it’s time to leave’, ‘let’s get away from here and go home’, ‘we need to get sober’, ‘we don’t need anymore’; leave promptly and behind them close the door.

But the Remainers instead stood up at the bar and demanded a deal to leave, something that the landlord was only too happy to oblige with, knowing well that as drunks the Remainers would voluntarily and willingly subjugate themselves, just so they could come back, get shitfaced all over again and then place themselves in a situation where they would just give away even more.

No, not many people see the truth in any of this. But that is why we use metaphors and especially so when we are far too close to reality to understand what’s going on around us, at a critical moment in our history when knowing the truth about what these so-called representatives of the people are actually doing on their own behalf is vital, because they are telling us and letting many of us believe that its for us all.

There is nothing beneficial for the UK or our People taking place in this Parliament.

The majority of our MPs are sold out either directly to the EU or indirectly via misplaced loyalty to the people who are leading them – and therefore all of us, over a very steep edge.

Whether deliberate or by accident, they are all modern-day quislings. They are aiding a foreign power in the guise of the EU to take control over us all, step-by-step, lie-by-lie, rule-by-rule. And they are content to do so as they believe that their roles in Parliament will continue to be assured, knowing that they are selling out their own People and over 300 years of Democracy in order to facilitate any policy that will allow them to do so.

Anything other than leaving the EU without a foolish and unnecessary ‘deal’ – no matter what steps are now taken to bring it about – will be a complete betrayal of the British People.

It is not what we the British People Voted for.

And from any Elected Representative, we have the right to expect a whole lot more.

 

images thanks to unknown/’Brick Top’ from the Film ‘Snatch’