April 1st
It is a time since the sixteenth century when the U.K. celebrates the day of playing a prank or fooling some friends or family about something that might not be true. In North America, on February 2nd they have a day called Groundhog Day, which refers to something reoccurring, or repeating always being the same.
I’m addressing again the lack of good leadership in the U.K. as many are believing the country is not ready for the eventualities of the Coronavirus. The government believes you can fool some of the people at some time, but the people know differently and they cannot be fooled all of the time. The lack of vision or forward-thinking has been a Groundhog Day again in my opinion, where good leadership has been absent in Great Britain these past 75 years. Just hearing the news that Barcelona’s top football players have agreed to reduce their weekly wage bill by 70%. Lionel Messi is on salary at the top of the tree, earning 391 million euros (£347 million) a year. Many top players in Europe, the U.K. and America are earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. This crazy economic bubble where most top football clubs and some small clubs are already close to insolvency. It's essential now, that all player's salaries should be cut because the economics of the football world has been living in a state of madness for years. Why? Because with this long sporting closure the U.K. will face which could see so many football clubs going to the wall. The U.K. football heritage goes back to 1871, and to safeguard this long and valuable tradition and institution, strong leadership is required from the top of government.
It’s not there at the moment and it screams out there is no one bold enough to start creating defences for all manner of problems that will flow down this river we are all on. It was again in the build-up to the Second World War, where the government was sleeping until the last vital moment when Winston Churchill came and introduced a fighting spirit that brought the fighting bulldog and awoke the lion within each of us. We are in a financial crisis and should be on a war footing to save lives and save the future of having an economic revival. Governments in this crisis should not be funding everything and will not be able to do so. You will see this sort of thinking as I’ve mentioned with footballers, being applied to the very wealthy, as it’s unavoidable not to expect big changes. Today a professor was asked, Why we are not producing more tests especially for those nurses, doctors and front line staff? He was told only 2,000 tests have been made from half a million staff fighting this battle. He said, he did not want to criticise, but we were not facing the challenges that are presently there. Such thinking like that was there in the first First World War where criticism was regarded as being unpatriotic. As a consequence such actions allowed the Generals to play a sick game of numbers with men’s lives. They believed if one side or the other lost so many thousand men, the sums would eventually add up to say, we have more men than the others and victory would be ours. This proved that through no national criticism, thousands of more soldiers died wrongly in such horrendous numbers. I pray we are not in a deja-vu moment again. Fear is an enemy, and outspoken views from individuals can lead from defeat to victory. At lunchtime the same professor pointed out, we have in our country thousands of good scientists who not actively working together, and we have many laboratories that are not being fully used. Again failure of leadership. We are seeing many heroic actions taking place with front line staff, probably as in any wartime when there will be thousands of untold stories that will never be heard. We are seeing many on the lowest paid of jobs having to be at work, doing work without chance of being tested nor having the appropriate clothing, masks or more. This is a story showing again the poorest take the metaphoric flack, and the wealthy don’t come forward voluntarily until they are embarrassed to do so.
This itself says again, Time for Change. I mentioned in my book New Foundations in 2006 about the housing problem was high on the list, suggesting ways we could build enough homes at affordable prices. Today we see a generation who cannot ever have hope of seeing a good home that will provide the essentials to bring their young children into a happy environment. These were visions for the future which have not been achieved but can be achieved with big changes. The first lines I was given to write on the Agricultural page, of my small book, which then and now I believe was powered by spiritual energy. It said as a country we need to be self-sufficient in almost all departments of commerce, industry and farming. We cannot allow farms to go to the wall because supermarkets can dictate their global purchasing power. It went on to say a lot more in 2006. We saw a picture on Facebook showing people gathering food crops, then to my surprise a leading figure in politics of the U.K. said, we need to bring people in from Eastern Europe to do this job. Some of these politicians are still in a realm of surreal realities. Many people are being paid 80% of their wages who are now forced to stay at home. We do as we did in the last war, take charge if necessary of the farms through this emergency and put any of the young to do this job, rather than see fruit and vegetables go to waste. We have to change our mindset, and so will other countries, we are not alone where radical changes must occur. On the bright side, our country has highly skilled people, and innovation, and entrepreneurs must be encouraged and rewarded for their efforts. When anyone has a good idea and goes as far as to put their home up as collateral, we must give them the best of help. Such ideas are endless if we have the will and belief we can have a more equal society. This is not the end, but a new beginning, a new and better future for all children, and for those disadvantaged children who have not had good parenting or a good start to live. The knife crimes and other evil activities of drugs could end if we encouraged the young more, as we could give them the belief that their dreams could come true in a more equal and fairer society. The future is what we can make by seeing new enlightened thinking taking charge, and teaching all children they are special and they all have a great gift to give this world. Those who start on this river of life with so many disadvantages will have the love and help they desperately need because this new generation will be taught and shown that if we can give to others less fortunate than ourselves, we can make a beautiful world for all.
