Tag: Ukraine

The role of British Farmers has been neglected at our peril. Sadly, the politicians won’t see it until it’s too late, so it’s the Farmers who will have to begin the localised food supply chain revolution instead

Farmers are by nature, the most creative and entrepreneurial managers, engineers and technical workers that I know. They are, or rather they become these multitalented vocational giants by living lives that involve operational management, frequently calling them into action at any time, 24hrs a day, 365 days a year – pretty much from the day that they are born.

Farmers are, in effect, the complete antithesis of our Members of Parliament and the political class. And it’s because of the lack of understanding and respect for what British Farmers do, that the politicians we have – whether in Government or not, have allowed British Agriculture and all of the industries allied to and feeding into it, to reach the state that they are now in.

The problems that British Farmers face remain closely aligned to what their European counterparts are experiencing.

Indeed, whilst many from what in 2016 was the Remain camp are still pushing the narrative that leaving the EU and the whole Brexit vote was a gargantuan mistake, those same people are strangely silent when it comes to comment or discussion on what Farmers within in the EU Member nations are facing right now.

Across Europe, unelected bureaucrats and out of touch politicians are pushing an agenda which will see Nation States close down some of the very best food production in the world. All at a time when supply chains are already collapsing, there are growing food shortages and in no time at all it will not just be hungry people who are out of sight and out of mind that could be the ones who are about to starve or go without.

What underscores the futility and the madness of this perverse strategy, pursued by people who have never been at the hard end of an operational business in their life, is the reality that their grand plan mirrors the ridiculous decisions made by the political classes across Europe not only to shelve and mothball, but to destroy fossil fuel burning energy plants and sources. All coming under the ridiculous assumption that buying in supplies and services from elsewhere from across the World is not only safe, but can be sold to the public as being green and therefore alright.

Yes, you did read that correctly. The leading classes of Europe and the UK too, are and have for some time quite literally been shutting down, wilfully neglecting and even deliberately destroying our own national systems of production.

The politicians we have elected to look after our best interests have been making us all vulnerable to whoever they then do some kind of deal to buy replacement supplies and services from.

All of this is so that Politicians can pay lip service to fulfilling an impossibly idealistic promise of achieving Net Zero – or some other departure from reality based narrative they are pushing that isn’t just economic with the truth, but is an outright lie.

Why is the lie so important? The lie that the politicians tell is so important, because it’s just another lie to cover up the impact of another very big and very damaging lie about the benefits of globalisation and commercialisation – which is what the EU was always really about.

The irony should be lost on none of us that Globalisation and greed-based Commercialism are the real and genuine cause of all of the climate and environmental problems that we do genuinely have.

Equally, we should be under no illusion that the climate and environmental problems that we do genuinely have would go into free fall, in the direction of positive change, the moment that we stepped back from the money is god and a profit led existence, and allowed on-shoring, relocalisation and the protectionism that is now essential to the UKs future to be restored.

Whilst it will never be said about the European Union, even by many of the Brexiteers who never really understood this part of the EU Membership travesty themselves, the EU and everything about it has just been one disastrous exercise in globalisation and commercialisation.

The Common Market and everything that followed as part of the EU Project evolution was a self-serving spin off of the Globalisation myth, repackaged with the lie that with the overarching politicisation and centralisation of the European sub version, the issues that befall the removal of international barriers and the many risks it brings on a Global level, would never be our own.

As many of us can already see with just the Energy Crisis alone, this foolishness – however well intended, doesn’t work when so many differences of opinion, cultures and different ways of being are involved.

We can all see what has happened as a result of Western Governments responding as they have to the war in Ukraine, when the same politicians had destroyed our own self sufficiencies in order to ‘open up the doors’.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact of all the very poor decision making that got into full swing long before Brexit, Covid and Ukraine were ever in the frame.

Sadly, the system collapse that so many within the elites, the establishment and our own government are doing so much to hide, is already well underway.

It’s just the case that we are not all going over the cliff at the same moment in time. That’s why not all of us can see it. YET.

However, the fall of an entire industry that will affect all of us – our Farming Industry – is most definitely already underway. And we fail to realise, accept and understand this at our peril.

Yes, food is on the supermarket shelves. We can still get just about everything we could possibly want. So you are probably asking the question, ‘Why should we be worried about Farmers and British Agriculture now?

Sadly, we will not believe that life can be any different to what it is now, until it already is.

If you need an example that makes sense of this, cast your mind back to the beginning of 2020 when the first lockdown began and then life changed for us all in an instant.

We may have forgotten Social Distancing and Lockdowns for now. But many of the direct consequences of disastrously poor decision making on the part of our politicians is only just beginning to materialise now, nearly three years on.

Amongst all of the issues which are currently popular, the ability of the UK to feed itself is strangely absent from that list. Yet the UK Food supply is now at massive risk of collapse – That’s the supply of the food that we need to meet our basic needs and not the ridiculous variety of imported and mass processed items and ingredients that we have become used to.

Our Basic food supply is at risk for a number of reasons. These include the centralisation and globalisation of food supply chains which are going to collapse; the way that British Agriculture has been placed at the mercy of innumerable agents, resellers, speculators, traders and middle men who take massive profits whilst adding no value and push farm prices down, whilst pushing retail prices up; and decades of reconditioning under the auspices of EU membership that has led British Farmers to rely on subsidies that have taken away the incentive and freedom to compete.

There are many more.

The situation regarding our food supply is much more complicated and serious than it is possible to do real justice here.

The real tragedy and threat to us all, is that because our Politicians created or led the implementation of the market structures that are currently at work – even though they did so in no small part on behalf of the EU – everyone, and most importantly our Farmers, are expecting our politicians to ensure that every issue created by Brexit, along with the collapse of global supply chains and the fallout of other events such as the War in Ukraine, will be dealt with – as it is perfectly reasonable and logical for us to be able to expect.

They have not. They are not. They will not be addressed by the politicians we have.

I have been writing at length about the changes, challenges and difficulties we face. But this isn’t just the interpretation of one former politician and businessman sharing the reasoning of their own concerns. A former head of MI5 has warned about the issue of food security, as well as the National Farmers Union itself have been sounding the alarm.

The real problem that even these very credible sources cannot counter, is that our politicians are so out of touch and prioritise whatever they believe to be in their best interests.

It is not until you really begin to understand just how out of touch with reality our politicians actually are, that you can then start to consider and appreciate that the British People are heading for an extraordinary amount of pain, that would have been both unnecessary and avoidable IF we had politicians that fulfilled their responsibilities as they always should do.

Getting people and especially Farmers to realise and understand that the solutions will not come from this government or any new government that is formed from the political parties or groups that are known to us and that we have on offer to us today is challenging indeed. Especially as it means that the solutions we now need, through restructuring, onshoring and relocalising supply chains to a what we would recognise as being conversant with a much more traditional form, MUST be led with British Farmers and all of the related industries right out in front. Just as the political change that we all so desperately need must also come from the grassroots up.

I began writing this blog by making reference to the ingenuity and industriousness of our Farmers. This has already been well illustrated by the many ways that members of the Farming Community have already diversified their businesses, to become manufacturers, growers, producers and retailers of a very different kind, taking back control and managing every step of the process from farm to fork themselves, or working collaboratively on a very small localised scale, where it can quite literally be said that many hands make light work.

Whilst our Politicians will not accept this probably until it is too late to avert further harm, UK self sufficiency in food production, as well as the majority of the key things or basics that we are going to need, is not only now strategically key to our future. This is how world events and the UKs circumstances will soon dictate that they MUST be.

We cannot wait for the politicians to change their minds, or it wont just be the cost of living crisis, but shortages of basic foods that make British People hungry too.

Our existing politicians will always exhibit loyalty to the very system that has broken the back of British Farming for no other reasons than greed, profit and control. The existing Public Policies on Farming, Fisheries and Food have certainly never been for the purposes of benefiting UK Industries or British consumers – no matter the lies and the lies to cover up those lies that we have been continually told.

Please can we all wake up before its too late and there is nothing left to work with. We need a revolution in farming and we need it to happen now.

It will not come from the top and must run from the grassroots up. Farmers must be at the middle of local food supply – the way it should always have been.

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Surviving The Great Reset | Deglobalisation | There will be Permanent Changes to the Supply Chain

The very challenging thing for everyone to accept as we look at the world we have been used to today, is that everything we have been taking for granted is going to change.

We will discuss other fundamental or building-block areas of change elsewhere. But in terms of the Global Supply Chain collapse that is underway, which has only been aided and abetted by the responses of Politicians to Brexit, The Covid Pandemic and the War in Ukraine, the massive change across the world that’s coming, will be felt by consumers and end users in terms of what goods we will be able to buy and what foods are readily available for us to eat.

The reality of this change will be the reconstruction of supply chains that focus on home and very localised production, processing, distribution and retailing, all of which have been progressively and aggressively dismantled as the shift from localised marketplaces to the so-called Global Economy has taken place.

The change and transition from Global to Local will be permanent. Globalisation is over. Our values and priorities are going to fundamentally change.

Yes. It was always intended by big business, politicians and the elites, that Global networks and systems they developed and sold as being beneficial to us would always be permanent. Unless or until they could find even more profitable ways to make even more money at even lower costs, without any consideration for the lives of everyone else apart from what money anyone else had to spend on the products that these increasingly nebulous systems brought to our doors.

But the Global System is no longer functional. The motivation and aims that created it are being exposed for what they are. This means there will be no going back to a greed-based economy.

A robust local economy is all about people and values, rather than money and wealth. There are benefits to our wellbeing from what lies ahead that money and marketing could never buy.

It’s time to think beyond just surviving The Great Reset to the light beyond and how we can then begin to really thrive.

Brexit, Covid, Ukraine & The Great Reset

It is important to understand that the whole system has been dysfunctional for a very long time.

That is, if it can even be said that the system was genuinely functional at any time.

It has been momentum or a seemingly unending direction of travel that has kept the whole thing going. Just as long as the lie didn’t get uncovered, there remained untapped resources to exploit and the elites or those in their pay could find new ways of rolling this turd of a story in glitter, so that the truth remained hidden in plain sight.

The European Union has been a very useful part of this money-making con. It is no accident that the steps towards increased EU power picked up speed and political acceptance in the ways and on the timeline that it otherwise inexplicably did.

That is why the Brexit Vote in 2016 hit the elites and the establishment with such a bloody great big shock.

In fact, Brexit was to be only the first blown tyre on a bus that was never meant to be stopped. The elites didn’t bank on Covid, nor Ukraine being the next two to go. Nor, that in terms of political drivers in time of an unplanned crisis, they had only ever made provision for there being useful idiots at the wheel or ready to step in from the bunk.

Even a corrupt, unethical system that exploits others can survive for a very long time. That is, as long as those with their hands on the levers of power, don’t overreach and break the systems own rules.

Dependency on Foreign supplies compromises UK security

Perhaps the biggest cost of globalisation that has never been factored into the equation (or more likely it has deliberately been left out), has been the issue of what happens when a Country becomes dependent upon supplies of goods or services that come from another Country, or Countries that may not always have interests that are mutually aligned or have like for like benefits with the UK at their heart.

The best example of where dependency can compromise the security of a country or of the interests of that country is very current and comes in the form of the dependency that Germany has on Russia for its supplies of natural gas.

During the Ukraine crisis (late February 2022), Western Countries excluded Russia from the SWIFT International Banking System as a punishment (also known as a sanction) for invading Ukraine. Yet Germany had a special dispensation to not do so, as it would not have been able to continue paying the Russians for gas supplies, if it had continued to be involved.

Whilst Germany was most compromised by becoming dependent upon Russia for energy supplies, the reality is that as a Country, the UK is far too dependent upon other Countries for the supply of essential goods and services too.

For as long as this situation exists, and for as long as we have politicians in control of the UK who either cannot or will not take tough decisions on energy supplies or the supply of anything that is essential to us as a matter of course, we will remain at risk of high-level compromise with countries that supply us and can therefore bribe us, as our security as a Nation will remain exposed.

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.

Brexit, Covid & Ukraine: The Catalysts of Change

Not everyone understands or accepts the principles of the Butterfly Effect or the Ripple Effect.

But as I wrote and discussed in my e-book Small Decisions have Big Consequences, the significant issues that we face today will have come about as the result of many different decisions that those taking them would never had such consequences in mind.

At the time of writing, most of the voices that I hear or read have become obsessed with the invasion of Ukraine.

Yet their obsession is about the now, and what it means in the future for them.

There is little in terms of thought being given to what the events we are experiencing in Ukraine really signify. Or more importantly, what influence the Ukraine Crisis and how it is handled by our politicians will mean in relation to what happened before, and where the world and how we live will go next – once the immediate crisis has itself disappeared from the news.

David Cameron led to the EU Membership Referendum. The EU Membership Referendum led to Brexit. Brexit led to Theresa May. Theresa May led to the near three-year Parliamentary logjam. The near three-year Parliamentary logjam led to Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson led to the unnecessary Covid Measures. The unnecessary Covid measures precipitated the coming collapse and cost of living crisis. And then Vladimir Putin got involved…

These are events that are in public view. They are happening at the ‘macro level’. But their implications and consequences, along with the influences that guide their next steps, are happening concurrently at the ‘micro level’ – that’s in all of our lives – too.

As this book is about the process and outcome of Levelling Level – and what we will experience in the coming years or during what comes ‘next’, I will not dwell on the mechanics of Brexit, Covid, or even todays Crisis in Ukraine – especially as I have covered these in other Books and within my Blogs.

However, Brexit was the first stage of what in future is likely to prove to be a trilogy of key events, that through the actions, responses and decisions of our politicians, through the Covid Pandemic and the Covid Measures that they imposed, and then on to the way they have handled Ukraine and used it with other purposes in mind, they have effectively sealed the deal on the Great Correction – that bit by bit will change life as we know it, probably for many years to come.

Why the Tories are pushing the ‘Levelling Up’ agenda

Before anything, it’s important to understand just how important the Levelling Up agenda really is to the Conservative Party today.

Politics in the UK has changed from what it was. The European Referendum or ‘Brexit’ Vote in the summer of 2016 was a watershed moment. One that tells anyone paying real attention to the change that nothing in British Politics could be the same again – that is even before the arrival of the Covid Pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine and everything that happens next.

Truss in Moscow: Why big her up and say she must have got it right because the Russians are putting her down, when its more likely they have realised she’s just another clown?  

Incompetent Politicians don’t change their spots. Nor do they grow a set of angelic wings, just because they have hopped on a plane and started swanning around media opportunities with Foreign Leaders, bigging themselves up with tough sounding statements and behaving as if they are completely in charge.

Yet to hear and read the comments that many are making about Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s visit to Moscow this week, it sounds very much as if our journalists and commentators think this is precisely the case.

Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s retort that facts ‘bounce off’ Truss and saying that speaking to the wannabe prime minister was akin to ‘the deaf talking to the blind’, doesn’t exactly take us into unfamiliar territory.

In fact, under the Johnson regime during the Covid Pandemic, an honest assessment of any kind where any of our Ministers leading this Government is concerned is likely to sound very similar if not exactly the same.

For some reason, because a Russian minister has said this, there now exists some lapse from any kind or reality. It has solicited a robotic response that where Truss in Moscow is concerned, this view simply cannot be true.

In fact, the journos and commentators have gone further still, and suggested that such a response tells us that Truss is doing her job right and not letting the Russians push us around. [head in hands]

Regrettably, few seem to comprehend the danger of allowing politicians of the poor quality that our current politicians, defined by a lack of a relationship with reality as they are, to head off and attempt to generate headlines from World events that are all about themselves. Rather than being anything to do with the true breadth and depth of what they are trying to involve us all in, Doing so, on no more than a whim.

As I wrote here recently, the UK isn’t equipped, resourced or politically stable enough to get involved in foreign wars that have nothing to do with us directly OR indirectly in any way.

Indeed, it is the very same political class from which our ambitious Foreign Secretary is drawn, who have been systematically responsible for dismantling our Armed Services over decades. Yet they continue to parade around and evangelize that in the sense of all things military, we still have the might and power of the days of Empire. When the truth is that the UK is not able to offer any thing like the same thing, and their stupidity has a horrible habit of unnecessarily costing British lives.

There is no question of the threat that the Russian Chinese Axis provides both militarily and economically.

But these two belligerent powers are not afraid of the West today in any way. Rather than allowing our politicians to keep doing the ‘Big I am’, we would do well to be asking why.

The Chinese and the Russians have been playing strategic games with us for years now. Using methods and means that our own political strategists don’t even understand. Our government advisors certainly offer no counter solutions that our fearful political class would be willing to embrace.

The bottom-line reality of all this is that we should not take Russian talk of using nuclear weapons to make what we believe to be a rhetorical point, any less seriously than we did the news that the United States had actually done so against Japan at the end of the Second World War.

It is after all highly feasible that the story gaining traction about Covid being generated by a lab leak in China has far more deliberate and sinister overtones at its base. That both the Chinese and Russians – who are working ever closely together – know that an invasion of Ukraine, Taiwan or both, could all too easily provide them with the leverage to harness and then remove any military or economic threat that the West currently has against them.

The Russians and the Chinese know and understand that our Politicians are all words, and not action. They know that they will run away from whatever frightens them. Because leadership and dealing with the everyday challenges of crisis and conflict and what they bring with them in the moment, are not abilities that our glory seeking politicians possess. As such standing up to them effectively is not even a choice.

This political class are right up to their necks in the problems that the UK already faces. We are in no position for Liz Truss, Boris or for any of them to go to work creating any more.

In the weakened state that the UK is now in, not least of all because of the Johnson Governments’ wholly unnecessary response to Covid, we should at least try to find the humility to accept that it doesn’t matter how wrong the attitude and approach of a foreign power may be. The chances are that they are not taking the UK seriously, because above all else they have worked out that we are being led by clowns.

We should not risk British lives or resources to fight a war that is not ours in Ukraine today

The Romans said, ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’. And whilst generations of politicians have ignored this idiom at their peril, its true meaning and the counter consequences of this sage advice are still continually ignored by those who rule us.

Despite the media obsession over Boris Johnson’s Lockdown Parties this week, there is plenty of news coming from around the world and from across the UK itself that should be reaching us all in a much clearer and defined form.

Turbulence within the US Stock & Bond Markets aside, the biggest story that should be getting a lot more airtime, thought and discussion is the massing of Russian Military Forces at the border and the potential invasion of Ukraine – which sources suggest could be about to take place at any time.

The most recent revelations from No.10 have told us much about the way our haphazard Government works. And with this in mind, we should all perhaps be significantly more concerned that behind the saga of the Prime Ministers coming fall and the celebratory ending of Covid ‘Plan B’, the UK has already been sending military equipment to support Ukraine. Further still, that this apparent generosity may be about to be increased with the deployment of UK Military Personnel and Resources to other Countries that Border Russia – if not actually Ukraine itself.

Whilst the rights and wrongs of the debate surrounding whether there is anything legitimate about what the Russians have already done in Crimea and what they may be about to do in Ukraine may already be clear, our Politicians must face reality.  

For years now, Russia and the Chinese Communist Party have been building on their plans to remove or destroy the power hegemony that has been the post-war preserve of the West

Meanwhile, the weak minded and incompetent politicians that we have running the Country have obsessively functioned on the basis that all problems and their solutions revolve around the use or removal of money.

In terms of horizon scanning and watching for the problems that are coming that may affect us right across the World, their self-interested addiction to secure immediate headlines and curry public opinion to get ahead of the polling curve has in effect, left the UK – in many ways – strategically vulnerable and dangerously exposed.

Over the past two years, the way that the Johnson Government has chosen to deal with every problem that Covid and their response to it has created has been simply to throw money around.

Through the execution of a philosophy that looks remarkably like ‘gifts and gongs buy everyone’, the quasi-corrupt approach that has been adopted has only been countered by cuts or reductions in areas of public interest that are away from the media gaze.

Out of sight, out of mind is all well and good if there are no consequences involved. But this and previous Governments from all political sides have been systematically shedding Military personnel and reducing our conventional Military capabilities purely on the basis of what a ‘standing’ Army, Navy and Air Force financially cost.

In the odd moment when some of our better journalists have shed light on this process, we have been deliberately led to believe that the world has changed so much that future wars will only be cyber related. That boots-on-the-ground fighting is already a lost cause.

This delusion is of course one that having non-leaders who are obsessed with headlines, polls and keeping their seats has vacuously created. It does not at any point allow for the certain reality that crippling our infrastructure is only ever likely to be a first step in what could be a war that follows and that real deterrents against future oppression require the presence of realistic amounts of conventional as well as cutting-edge equipment, as well as the presence of trained and ready-to-go women and men who are ready to fight and certainly not pandered to appease the woke.

Yes, the UK could almost certainly rearm and push thousands of young people into military training if we had no choice but to engage in a new conventional war at any time.

But fighting wars is dependent upon a much bigger logistical, financial and political picture before we even begin to consider the realities of our relationships will be affected and what the fallout will be for us with other Countries around the World.

The truth is that because of our hapless politicians we have been caught napping. This is no time to be squaring up to Russia or to China, and especially so when the UK has been taken so very far away from self-sufficiency by their stupidity that the level of politics at play makes it simply too dangerous to risk getting voluntarily involved.

The chances are growing that there will be another war that will involve Russia and China. The reality is that with the questions over Ukraine and Taiwan, it could kick off very soon.

Good politicians would be reading the room as it is – both in terms of what our would-be foes are doing, and as far as our overall military capability is involved.

The picture for the UK militarily today is bleak. It is likely to take years of development and manufacturing to build up our Armed Forces to the capability of both defending the UK whilst also giving us adequate capability to engage meaningfully in conflicts abroad.

With self-serving and fear-driven attitudes and political obstructiveness as endemic throughout public life as they are, the biggest threat to us saving ourselves anytime soon is that we aren’t ready to fight any prolonged conventional conflict.

Until such time as we are, we should be bringing our resources and personnel home, rather than giving the impression to the World that we can and will do anything meaningful to help others – when the reality is that any military engagement now is something that we can currently ill-afford.

By all means Boris, send equipment and weapons to help our Ukrainian Friends – IF we can afford it financially. But don’t go thinking that will have no consequences or possible fallout.

Throwing dead cats around and talking up foreign wars might offer you a fleeting lifeline of protection against the headlines when your political career and legacy is failing.

But like everything else you and this political class have already managed to fuck up, you could be about to open up a door to a very different kind of reality that holds with it a future that none of us are going to like or enjoy anything about.