This Substack is Archived
Find me instead at The Dissident Councillor
I started this Substack in the midst of Covid, when the world was a very different place. The sceptics movement was just getting its feet under it, as it became clear that the pandemic was being used (or perhaps engineered) to facilitate, in Klaus Schwab’s words, a “great reset.”
But many people I spoke to back then, even in the sceptics movement, still believed that we in the West lived under benevolent governments who were working in the best interests of their people. Now, almost no one I talk to believes that. That’s not to say that the majority believe that the government is actively working against them. It is to say that most people are seeing the breakdown of our institutions, whether they ascribe that to malice, incompetence, or failure.
Last year, I accidentally got myself elected as a councillor on Shropshire Unitary Council. I am the only councillor not to sit in a group (there is one other independent but she sits with the Green Party). That puts me in a slightly unusual position because it means I have absolutely no party-political dog in the fight. I, alone, among 74 councillors, am free to vote on every single matter on conscience alone, and I am free to represent my residents as I see fit, with no consideration given to Westminster politics or PR.
More importantly, it means that I’m both face to face with the institutional failings of Shropshire Council (and local government at large), and, crucially, free to talk about it without getting clobbered by a party leader. So I’ve decided to start a new chapter in my Substack ‘journey’ (for we must all be on some sort of journey nowadays, and preferably more than one).
To that end, may I introduce to you: The Dissident Councillor.
I have published my first article today, on the ‘Migrant Street’ at Stoke Heath, and what it tells us about the state of our democracy (by sheer coincidence Stoke Heath lies inside my ward):
My aim is to publish fortnightly, and ideally to publish conversations with interesting people who have been wrestling with institutional failure themselves, in one way or another. If you know of any people who would be worth talking to, please suggest them and I will get in touch with them.
In the meantime, all that remains for me to say is: thank you for coming on the How To Survive The Apocalypse / Freedom Radio ‘journey’ with me. However, that journey has now drawn to a close — I won’t be posting here again. I am leaving the site up as an archive; unfortunately Substack has no option to do that while closing a site to new subscribers so if you are new here, please subscribe to The Dissident Councillor instead.
