Our forests are disappearing, and we are paying for the privilege.

Let me explain what I mean:

When I took this photo, this forest was beautiful. In the winter, it was full of life and the smell of leaves and damp earth. In the spring, it was full of green, growing beauty; in the summer, it was cool and refreshing.

However, now it has been chopped down, and so much of the surrounding forest has been destroyed as well. It is a graveyard.

And there is so much around here, and around the country, where this is happening - just take a look at this link if you can bear to see the destruction we face:

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/protecting-trees-and-woods/threats-to-woods-and-trees/

As many of you know, we are in a cost-of-living crisis where wealth inequality is exploding. For many, even the chance to have a woodland near them, or simply to walk around a woodland, is a real privilege. As someone who grew up in London in a low-income household, I feel my privilege, my current privilege, every time I have the chance to walk around a woodland today.

In a cost of living crisis, it might feel like an incredibly privileged concern to care about our woodland, and I understand that.

So the question is: how does this affect all of us, and why are we are we paying for the privilege of deforestation?

Or perhaps, more specifically, if you are struggling to pay your bills and look after your children, as so many of us are, why should you care?

Well, firstly, let me say that if you are struggling, this is not your problem to solve. Focus on yourselves and be proud of what you’re doing. The reason you should care, I will outline:

Right now, many landowners are being paid to cut down forest. Then they are paid subsidies, funded by our taxes, to plant new trees.

They get free labour from people who want to help, and then sometimes they might even get access to further support to take care of this ‘new’ forest.

In other words, the public is paying landowners, by means of misappropriated forestry subsidies, to destroy our children’s heritage and future, to destroy our environment, to get paid to sell their own wood, and then plant trees and claim they participated in environmental action.

Politicians benefit in two ways. They attack environmental subsidies, insinuating that they are harmful, pointless, and wasteful. They also benefit from policies that seem as though they are not environmentally or socially aligned, whilst in reality they divert more funding to their rich, landowning mates to destroy our environment and profit, all whilst claiming moral capital for supposed environmental action.

And what does this mean for ordinary people like you and me who are just trying to get on with our lives?

It means that our system is broken, that our children’s future and the places we go to spend time are being destroyed whilst we pay for the privilege, whilst wealthy elites profit and our politicians perpetuate a broken system.

This is not just about forests. This is about how environmental destruction is a symptom of a broken system that transfers wealth from ordinary people to wealthy elites, whilst destroying our future, which should be the right of everyone.

It is a symptom of a system built around profit and privilege, liberty for power, and extraction of resource from ordinary people.

Thinking about myself when I grew up, this meant that the roads were unsafe to play in. The parks were unsafe because of drugs, and green spaces were inaccessible because we couldn’t pay for transport. Places to congregate were also inaccessible because I couldn’t afford to get the bus to a coffee shop, and parking my bike somewhere was unsafe. And there are many people like this.

Thinking about our children, it means that we are destroying their future. We are also permitting a system that allows the transfer of wealth from ordinary people to elites, whilst permitting the destruction of public resources and securing resource and wealth monopolies for a few.

It means our children will not be able to afford houses, or the luxury of an education, or perhaps job security. And it means our environment will be a graveyard.

So, what does this mean? Does this mean that environmental subsidies are bad?

No. It means that we need to ensure that environmental subsidies are directed from the public to the public good. It means that action of any kind should not be a political stunt that disguises the transfer of wealth from ordinary people to elites.

And when I say that, I think of Thames Water. I think of the many private equity schemes that have been destroying this country.

I hope that, amidst this climate of distractions, identity politics, rage bait, social media addiction, and the replacement of action with outrage, we can remind ourselves to be clear-eyed about what matters.

For me, that is a future for our family. For me, that is the protection of resources that we all should have access to, not just the privileged few.

For me, it means holding our politicians to account, and that means not looking at what they say, but paying attention to what they do for you.

What I mean by that is: ask yourself a simple question amidst the noise and the media rhetoric – what has meaningfully improved for you, your life, and your children, and is the noise of today a distraction or something that will materially move the needle for you your loved ones, your communities, and our country.

And I hope we see our politicians and our media illuminating that these disasters, including Epstein, deforestation, the rising cost of living, and war inflation, are properly addressed.

It means our politicians and our media start naming these disasters and these frauds not as witch-hunts for individuals but as symptoms of a broken system. We must start naming the systemic issues and moving towards addressing them.

To put it very simply, we must start with wealth inequality. Wealth inequality transfers power and centralises it in the hands of a few, who buy our politicians, who buy our media, who monopolise power, influence the use of violence, and erode democracy.

It means enriching a few, by taking from our children.

So let’s remind ourselves to not get distracted by rage bait and the feeling of outrage that replaces action and the calls to divide ourselves along the lines of contrived difference.

And, instead, lets stand together, stop wealth inequality and the transfer of power and resources from ordinary people to elites and demand our politicians fix the broken system to protect our children.

Our country is sliding off the edge of a cliff - is this the best we have got?

Two prominent leaders, having a spat? Thousands of people, whose faith, yet again, has been thrown on rocks?

Is this the best we've got?

Our country gets worse, people’s lives get worse, and the only unifying force that’s gaining traction is a movement bound by hate?

Is this the best we've got?

What is going on?

When we define ourselves simply as the force that stops ‘fascism’, that’s not a vision, it’s not a mandate for change - it’s panic.

It is not a unifying clarity of purpose or a vision that shows people that things will get better.

"We’re going to try and not make this shit-show even shitter", is simply not the same thing as "things will get better".

At best, all that defining ourselves as 'anti-fascist' can ever be is a mission to return to the former status quo.

We can do better. We must do better.

We must stop defining ourselves as a reaction to the right.

We must be a vision for change:

A fairer Britain, that works for everyone - where ordinary people’s lives get better.

We must stop defining ourselves by meaningless tribal jargon:

Left, right, socialist, fascist. Little tins of nonsense that strip out our humanity, our purpose, our minds and our common aspirations.

We must instead define ourselves by our common identity:

We’re ordinary people, good people.

By our values (the compass that guides us):

We are decent people, who look after each other and who want to leave this place better for our kids.

Simplified: Compassion, Humanity, Sustainability.

We must define our purpose by our common goals and common struggles:

When people’s lives get worse, they’re ignored, mocked, labelled, and told to be grateful it’s not worse. When their benefits are stripped away, their hard work doesn’t pay, their debt rises, the houses that their parents could afford, are now out of reach, when children become a luxury, and the only thing they are offered is hate, what option do they have but to follow Tommy Ten Names, and the "Peoples Goblin" (Farage)?

We are:

People, ordinary people, who want to just get by.

They see us talk about the environment in 50 years and foreign wars thousands of miles away, whilst they face a lived reality today, where they can’t feed their kids, heat their homes, or afford to hope.

What option, apart from anger, have they got?

How do we move forward?

We need to give people hope, a vision and a commitment to making their lives better - a commitment to making ordinary people’s lives better.

The enemy is declining living standards, a crumbling NHS, and jobs that don't pay. Not each other.

When your house is falling apart, two jobs are not enough, you're sick, surrounded by decay, your kids are hungry - what option is there but hate?

The solution is to tackle the problem (wealth inequality), not the symptom (hate).

Wealth inequality means that wealth buys our politics, buys our democracy, buys the narrative, buys our houses, puts up the rents, buys our water companies, sells our NHS for parts, for profit.

Wealth inequality means that most of us don't have the time to have a voice, or a choice, because we barely have the time to survive.

It means that we're forced to let 'them' be our voice, and make the decisions for us.

Except whilst they do make decisions - those decisions are not for us.

The enemy is wealth inequality. Not the far right.

The solution

Redistribution. Stop wealth inequality. Stop trickle-up economics.

We need a fair Britain that works for everyone, including the hardest hit.

They’re good people, too. Just people living in difficult times.

Let’s stand together and focus on the mission.

We don’t have time to faff about and form coalitions and debate terminology whilst our country falls off a cliff.

How change happens

• Clarity of purpose - step back and focus on the big picture, not debate the details

  • Vision: A fairer Britain, that works for everyone.

  • Problem: stop wealth inequality - the looting of our common wealth, to make a few people richer (treat the cause, not symptoms).

• Clarity of values (our compass) - Be decent, look after each other, leave things better for our kids (Compassion, Humanity, Sustainability)

• Clarity of identity & unity: - we're ordinary people, good people. Not left, not right, etc.

• Clarity of action: Join the Greens today, shape the policy (it’s democratic) and help us build a fairer Britain that works for everyone!

Notes: the Greens are not perfect, we need more focus (it's why I'm writing this), we need more representation (it's why I'm writing this), but they are the only party that can make change happen.

Every other party only gives us a choice between slow decline, or fast decline.

Because when those parties work for people who benefit from the problem, they will never be a solution.

But the Greens can't do it as they stand today. They need you.

We need focus, unity, and clarity.

We need you.

Join the Greens today, and make change happen.

The video above shows the Green Party’s biggest political failure today.

It reveals the gap we Greens need to bridge, and aren’t, between Reform members and us.

It shows that Nigel Farage’s voters want many of the same things we Greens do.

Yet, the only messaging that makes many Reform voters feel heard is Farage’s.

Why is this happening? Why are we failing?

It is not just about semantics and political posturing - it’s that many of the things the left says do not help the people struggling to feel heard.

When Farage’s voters (especially the large majority of Reform’s base who come from relatively impoverished areas vs wealthier, on average, Green constituencies) hear us talk about how we need to help immigrants, and give them hotels…

they hear;

“We can’t afford our bills, to feed our kids, no one helped us, and you’re helping them, and you, like everyone else, don’t care about us.”

they feel;

Betrayal.

they experience;

The reality that poverty in the UK is, at best, invisible and, at worst, a reason to be ashamed.

they hear;

Poverty is their individual responsibility and an expression of their failure.

… Perhaps best captured explicitly in the idea of benefit scroungers (which most of us would never align with).

But more implicitly, every time, we call them stupid, for being angry, of their lived reality, that no one cared, and so they placed their hope in someone who might be different, we reinforce the same message.

(Levels of education and wealth have a strong positive correlation).

And, when we call them stupid, because they stood in hopeless anger, against others, who are not them, but get support when they don’t.

they hear, feel, and experience;

We don’t care.

And that we are blind to it.

So, why does this matter?

Because this gap. This blindness. To the reality so many of us live through daily, is tearing our country apart.

We, as Greens, must address this gap in our country, in our messaging, in our focus, and in our policies. We must prioritise tackling wealth inequality.

Reading this, you might wonder, why I am a Green member?

Simply: because I know my values - compassion, sustainability, respect, dignity, and democracy.

And, I believe the Green Party is the only party in Britain that represents my values.

The Greens, represent the potential of change.

But we, as Greens, must also realise: strong values are not enough to drive the change we need.

Strong values, without change, especially when many are left behind, is moral purity.

Success is not holding onto ideals.

Success is realising our values in the society we live in.

And for the people, we live with.

And, if we close our eyes to the reality people face, that isn’t success. It’s wilful blindness.

So I think, as Greens, poverty is the gap. The demographic data makes this clear: despite our values, we are not addressing, or communicating, effectively enough, about the biggest challenges people face.

The invisible poor in Britain, left behind.

And, the millions of hard-working ordinary people across our country, who are slowly starting to realise that things, are getting worse, not better.

That their hard work, doesn’t work.

How can we fix this?

The Greens, are not a promise - we represent years of values and progress.

The type of progress, that millions in Britain need.

And, which other parties, new and old, can only ever promise, but will never deliver.

Because, the lack of the right values, will, also, never, deliver the right results.

But to move beyond our success, and into the future, we must now recognise - the biggest challenge we face is not climate change.

The biggest crisis we face today is:

The crisis of wealth inequality.

Sweeping Britain.

Because, a divided country, will never be a Green one.

Our society, and our country, is broken. Fractured.

Divided against itself.

But, I believe, as I outline here; together, we can fix this.

The crisis of wealth inequality is tearing Britain apart. If we don’t confront it now, no party, not even the Greens, will succeed in building the future we all need.

Dee.

Lately, I’ve been feeling what I know a lot of us are feeling: like the country’s sliding into chaos. Inequality’s rising, trust is breaking, and it’s easy to feel powerless.

I decided to stop just worrying about it — and start doing something.

This Sunday, I’m launching a new YouTube channel called We Can Fix This.

The channel’s about three things:

• fighting inequality at its root

• resisting belief-hacking and media manipulation

• finding small, practical steps we can all take to feel hopeful and make progress

The first episode premieres this Sunday at 10am (UK). It’s just the start — but I believe small steps lead to bigger change.

👉 Set a reminder and watch the premiere here

If this resonates, it would mean the world if you:

• Subscribe on YouTube

• Share the link with a friend who might need a little hope right now

Thank you for supporting me in this. I’ll be using Substack to share behind-the-scenes thoughts and reflections as the channel grows.

Together, we can fix this.

— D

For much of my life I’ve been motivated by purpose, and a steely determination to get there, but I realised that that determination and approach can come with a cost;

Missing the treasure on the way…

In the past, I learnt that sometimes we are so keen to get to a destination, that sometimes we can miss the treasure on the way.

I’ve noticed that the British (a culture I was born into), have a certain view on timekeeping. Mainly that people in Britain like to be ‘on time’. Fine this might not be as punctual as German timekeeping, or as split-second accurate as a Japanese Shinkansen as it arrives at the station, but relative to my familial heritage, Sri Lanka, the British, love being on time.

I used to remember sitting in Sri Lanka, in a restaurant with no one else there, on a sunny beach, waiting for 50 minutes, for some chips to arrive, thinking wow ‘these people’ are so infuriating. When you go to Sri Lanka (and many other non-western countries) to a Brit, there is a lackadaisical attitude, where people seem to go about doing things, without a care in the world.

I remember being taught, as an Army Cadet, by a former Para, that if you’re late during a mortar strike, for example, bad things happen. So there is value, clearly, to being on time.

But I remember during my wedding, with a certain misery, that letting a schedule of important things run your life, is a great way to be miserable. At my wedding, it meant only looking at the little line items on our itinerary, with a dogmatic focus on being on time, to ensure there was time for the thing that was next, it was easy to miss out on a lot of joy.

Just like when I was sat, in Sri Lanka, frustrated about the delay of my chips, I missed out on the sunshine, the sound of the sea, and the menu items that would have taken half the time to prepare and been a million times yummier.

After my wedding, I realised, that unlike the British, Sri Lankans are always perfectly on time, for the things that matter. And you can see this and contrast the faces of the people getting the tube to work in London and the happy ease, that Sri Lankans carry themselves with.

The other thing I learnt here is that sometimes we can get so carried away with getting to the destination, we can forget to look out the window, and perhaps decide to stop or stay, at something even more wonderful we find on the journey (a little like how many years ago in New-Zealand I decided to ditch my itinerary) and just enjoy the many beautiful things we passed and saw, but had no plan for.

Focusing on the destination can kill the journey

I am not the first person to want to do difficult things and I won’t be the last. 

One of the things I’ve learnt is that we can be so focused on achieving our envisioned destination we might be so fearful of starting because we’re scared we’ll never get there. 

Fortunately, I’m a lucky person to not have struggled with this challenge too often. For sure I am frequently daunted and am sometimes worried about what’s ahead, but I think I’ve been lucky to find a way forward. 

But I have struggled with the second problem that arises from focusing on the destination…

That is when you are walking a difficult path, every minute you aren’t at your destination, or you realise you have to backtrack, it’s a frustration and a failure.

The only way you have to get through that kind of journey is with grit.

I remember once when I learnt to ski, I was in full Grit mode. I had put myself in an intermediate class, with zero hours on the mountain under my belt. I was the best in the group, despite being a beginner. But everything was effort. Everything was fight. Everything was being out on that slope to prove me to me. It was tiring. It was hard.

A day after being told by Babette, the 60+ year-old French ski instructor, that "I was the best in the group, but I try and think too much", I dislocated my arm looking after a friend, skiing hard in a whiteout.

I realised, whilst passing my ski school, and a horrified looking Babette in my blood waggon, I wanted to be more like her (glide down the mountain with ease and grace) and not hurtle down it like a possessed madman giving it everything he’s got.

Unfortunately, somewhere between being sworn at by a French doctor, who was putting my arm back and telling me that there was no way I would be back on the mountain, and the painkillers I was given later, I forgot the reflection for many years.

It was only until last year and, after getting very ill, for many months, I realised grit, can only get you so far.

It also makes the journey rather miserable. Yet we are constantly taught that grit is the only way.

As I’ve always had a sense of purpose, I’ve always tried to figure out how, as someone who grew up in a background of Buddhist teachings, I could help others, but not be attached to helping them. 

Not going to be all that helpful if I run from the world. Turns out that if all I did was push hard and burn out, I couldn’t be all that helpful either. 

I needed another way…

I found my answer

After a lot of soul searching, some good conversations, reading and research (a buddhist quote “there is no breather, just breath” inspired me) I think I found my answer…

“How can we walk with purpose, absent attachment?

You walk the path without striving for the end."

When I asked a friend my question, in my pursuit of an answer, he said “We live with an illusion that we are this body, the mind, and we own all that ,and we become attached. The same theory applies when it comes to people as well. , ‘My’  Dad, Mom, Wife, Kids etc. We need to understand that in truth, life is just a journey, we come ,and we go, and nothing belongs to us. We own nothing”

The path we pick (and there are many paths to pick from), gives us direction. When we don’t strive for the end, it doesn’t matter what hurdles we face. 

If we don’t strive for the end, we will also find joy, in the toil of life, and we will have meaning. If we are not consumed by reaching every milestone, perfectly on time, we will create the space to find what matters.

I also think, that if we learn to ski the slope of life, a little like my French ski instructor did (with grace and joy) instead of like my younger self (like a man possessed), we will be better for the others around us too. Perhaps a thought, I’ll write more on, some other day…

For now, good luck to you and whichever path you pick, I hope find peace and joy on the way.

PS: All my work is free to access (I don’t believe in paywalls). I write to share what I've learned in case it helps someone. If you’d like to support my work, you can subscribe here.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day ❤️

Dee.

• We’re sharks - if we’re not moving, we’re sinking.

• We’re in an economic recession because our economy didn’t grow [growth=progress]. This means life will suck.

• Our economy needs to grow.

• If you don’t grow, you will fail, perhaps as a human being.

• If you aren’t making progress or being productive, you’re a failure of a human.

This thought process is the same that underpins our world's dominant economic model: progress [profit] = welfare.

But progress is a toxic raison d’etre.

It assumes that if we’re not moving forward or progressing, we fail.

If our economy doesn’t move forward, we fail.

We are forever lost if we constantly aim for progress as if it were an end, not a means.

If we treat life as if it were a treadmill and consider our only goal to be ‘ progress’, in the end, we will have racked up many hollow miles of progress, but none of the time and effort is of significance, purpose, or meaning.

In other words, the mindless and dogmatic pursuit of progress = Wasted lives. Wasted time.

So, let us stop idolising progress.

Let us focus on what matters.

And, in case you’re wondering, it is up to us to define what matters.

For me, what matters is joy, seeing those I love flourish and experiencing the moments in life that are wonderful (and often lost in the blinkered pursuit of progress). Finding happiness and peace. Being a good human and supporting those who don’t have the privilege to afford the life I have been so lucky to experience.

But whatever your raison d’etre, whatever you decide is your ‘what matters’, let it not be a mindless pursuit of progress. Let it be for something. And the progress you make will be a byproduct of living a life worth living and moving toward your goal.

PS: All my work is free to access (I don’t believe in paywalls). I write to share what I've learned in case it helps someone. If you’d like to support my work, you can subscribe here.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day ❤️

Dee.