With small voice allow me to whisper these words to you. Allow this article to flow barely audible to your mind. Allow the stark quiet and let it break the human social algorithm you are a part of. Allow stillness to be a pleasure and let go of all mobile logics and all anchors. Human psychology is an anchor, an anchor is a weight, and a weight is heavy. When it comes down to it unpack your psychology and try and travel lite. Lose what you don’t need. Hate, racism, narcissism, vanity, insecurities, fears, patriotism, or nationalism, and most of all pain. If it hurts get rid of it. It’s a choice. Your choice. Do not allow others to make it for you. Accept reality for what it is, a subjective viewpoint, your viewpoint, nothing more, nothing less. Do not allow politicians with their paranoias weird to infect your mind, politics is nought more than a social infection nowadays, and all politicians lie when it suits them. All of them. Equally the forces of profit that lurk behind the political scenery, fuelling the political deceptions are as big an infection as politics is. Economics is psychology. Money is psychology. Status is psychology. Psychologies are infectious. Infections can be fatal. Think about all the politics you have heard recently, view it as an infection pathway, and then look at the lies told. Lies are infectious too. If lies have mass they are heavier than any anchor, making politics a weight around humanities neck that is strangling all of us. The untold millions screaming for attention on our internet media show you a reality of all these lies. Yes lies. Allow my small voice to reach you, listen to my viewpoint, but draw your own conclusions from it. Allow my truth to evolve in your own mind, embrace it’s quiet. Quiet is often true. Although liars have always been there, allow the words of one insignificant photographer, a photographer who knows the damage that lies can do, to reach you.

For too many decades the lies about the validity of climate change were allowed to escalate and cascade beyond any ability to control them. Exxon Mobil a fossil fuel super corporation of massive proportions devoted more energy and cash in opposing and debunking climate science, than they possibly did in researching new oil fields. Their lobbyists reinforced the viewpoint that science could be ignored and worked around, that profits were more important than life itself. A million devastated eco systems later and the world we live in is less hospitable to life itself. Our climate emissions have increased year on year, and the fun fact is that Exxon Mobil knew climate change was real and going to happen all along. They lied to make more money, they infiltrated any number of democracies and empowered feeble minded politicians with an idea. Unlimited growth. Another fun fact is that Exxon Mobil weren’t alone. The Koch Bothers, Rio Tinto, Monsanto, too many to name played this game with your life. They knew the negative impacts of their products and didn’t care. The Anti Vaxxers, the Flat Earth movement, all of those fringe groups are able to function because an appalling amount of money was spent in squashing science. Until today, where we have a pandemic and guess what? In the UK Boris Johnson is ignoring scientific advice and reopening the schools and businesses very prematurely.

For the Conservative party the solution to a real world problem is political. How can they get away with this? Easy. To a politician you are nothing more than a statistical blip, a number, a dot. The fact that England already has a runaway death toll is statistical, and creative accounting will reduce the scales to hide the true figures. We do not have accurate figures even now. Day one epidemiology involves tracing and testing, yet today as I write the system is still a shambolic gesture to the public. Nothing more.

A lie like herd immunity is just an excuse for doing nothing, and there in hides darkness. The statistics of it are subjective too, as it hinges on the viewpoint of the politician looking at them. The interpretation of the numbers is everything. All predictions are equally useless without accurate base data, and if that data is politicised then it will be a deception par excellence. A lie. What I can say is that back when the 1918 flu pandemic hit the second wave was worse, the virus had evolved/mutated and basically gotten to know us as a species. That is reality. Statistics when misread are at the expense of understanding and that is what is happening so far. Other worrying trends are that BAME people are suffering higher rates of mortality, the why of that will be figured out, but the explanation of it will be politicised. Read whatever you wish to from fudged statistics but do not call them anything but lies. That is what is happening right now, a game of risk factors where politicians are leading the country to a potentially worse outcome scenario. Any legal enquiry will devolve into chaos, because in a court of law truth is nothing more than a subjective tool, but another truth is that most of us could not afford to defend ourselves in a British court anymore, legal aid has been cancelled, by politicians, and any court of law is now reduced to little more than the richest liar wins. Lies are infectious. Lies have now infected Britains legal system. A decade ago that would have been illegal.

Relentless cutbacks in everything have taken a toll on all of our services, cutbacks fuelled by the pet hates of politicians. Simply put, the party of law and order have created a malnourished Frankenstein system that favours the corporate or the wealthy. The Police have to navigate a combination of political deceptions whilst scratching at their empty pockets for pennies. Lies can create new realities, that is what is happening right now, the pandemic like icing on a cake has created a whole new political playground. Scientists can take a back seat to economists and profits. Looking at the devastated mindset in British politics achieves nothing but depression, because accumulated lies make no sense. Easily packaged lies have unleashed a torrent of misery, cresting nationalistic waves our politicians are also playing with some dangerous concepts, concepts that will result in Britain decaying away into it’s component parts. Devolution will happen as long as liars run the show. Embracing American Right wing practices they will fail to explain any of this and angrily hand you a fait accompli of England. Politics by it’s very nature is a deception, it has nothing to do with truth or reality, and everything to do with perception, and perceptions can be manipulated. Lies and half truths become a major tool of such manipulations, and even silence can be politicised by these experts. When every democracy in the world has had a degree of infiltration, infection and pressures applied to it, then what future can we expect? When science can be ignored what does that achieve? When politicians can lie blatantly without any boundaries, what does that say about the systems in play?

I am quietly exercising my freedom of speech here in these words. My version of freedom of speech comes with a responsibility for my words, I am responsible for my words, they cannot be translated as a call to bring violence and oppression down on anyone. Responsibility. I am an atheist, but my bible has always been the International Declaration Of Human Rights. By choice I will hold true to that until I die, but looking around me I have to ask where is the responsibility. Any concept a politician decides to play with is going to roll down our social food chains. It will be expressed very differently and in many cases violently the further it goes. Politicians know this, but vanish in a puff of rhetorical smoke when it comes to responsibility, nowhere to be seen. My words in this article have to be clearly defined, politicians love to play with indefinable words, double or even multiple meaning words can hide a truth and leave their comments wide open to the voters perception without any reality attached to them. Politicians are all liars. A liar can only strand you in a desert. Following a lie is often fatal and always ends in tears. The worst part is that a lot of liars in one place will begin to believe their lies. Parliaments or congresses are such places. Which leads to an impasse where fuelling populist fires is now the name of the game. Everywhere. Televisual fantasies have collided with reality and the fantastical has won over vast swathes of people, but the fantasy is based on lies and without foundation. Who cares. This is just Britain. Looking elsewhere is just as bad though.

An American friend posted a video recently, he said. “No person of colour should watch this video.” Having worked in war zones I can tell you no one should watch that video. In some states in the states the police are off their racial profiling rocker, to a point worthy of apartheid South Africa, I watched it, black people being beaten relentlessly left right and center, I was stunned that this was interpreted as law and order, and with a country collared and lead by the National Rifle Association what could I expect. I am not American, I do not understand American politics, I don’t even pretend to understand British politics either, at least in Britain we are not trigger happy. Yet. What I do understand is lies. Nationalistic and racial lies that have been politically nurtured have now turned oppressive. When right wing guys n gals with military style rifles can break lockdown whilst declaring the coronavirus a scam that breaches their human rights, without much in the way of a negative response from the Whitehouse, but peacefully protesting clergy get tear gassed to make way for a bible toting president, a president who wants to put ANTIFA (anti fascists) on a terror list, as another black man called George Floyd has died at the hands of police officers. With America now in the grips of massive protest, expect Trump to start fanning the flames with more lies.

With a smaller voice I have watched as Donald Trump has used a demolition ball on the people of America. After decimating every environmental program he has failed to react to the pandemic, with an incompetence that will be paid for with beating hearts lost, he will declare mission accomplished. This master of alternative truths, lies, is now rolling along looking to the next election, after the curfews lift, he will roll out more mind blowing lies. If I was going to write about all of his lies and alternative truths then this would become a thesis. I personally pity anyone who would have to write a thesis about Donald Trump. Maybe this is what happens when you vote for a privileged playboy, what you get is spoilt. Some of the biggest lies though are structural. Labelling himself neo liberal was one such deception, because there is nothing liberal about it. Basically it is full on cutthroat capitalism. Simple. Not liberal. Not even particularly humane. Nowhere is particularly safe from him too. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been dragged through his political mud, lied about too by Trump. They are a none political global health organisation, dealing with concrete and dangerous health problems, in practice they avoid local politics by necessity, it doesn’t matter if you are dealing with public health issues who is in charge, what matters is medicine. They are not moral arbiters nor are they political, they are medics. Yet as the Pandemic took hold Trump told his biggest lie yet. “The WHO have a pro Chinese bias.” Using blatantly racial terms to relabel the virus the Chinese Virus, and play a blame game before the pandemic game had even started fully rolling. Even the combined military strength of NATO cannot deal with him effectively either, but Putin the grand magi of political deception can. Twitter may not be able to deal with Trump, whilst facebook capitulated, and the lies will rocket onwards and upwards. Playing every card possible to make it all look cute. Fluffy fascism? Twitter stand accused of picking on the right wing? Twitter. An open forum.

All the lies are dangerous. There is no such thing as reasonable or respectable racism. Yet the lies will create that reality if left unchecked, normalising racist extremes once more. Climate change is a real problem, a clear and present danger, continued lies will blind you to the danger. If Boris Johnson was following the science we would all still be in lockdown, but he is following Cherry picked science, relabelled some of it to suit his economic and political view. That blinds us to a very real danger with the second wave. Lies can never bind us all together but they can blind us all. Looking at any analytics is interpretive, but understanding what you are looking at it key to comprehending it all. Social media algorithms claim to be accurate, but they cannot be. All of us project a view of ourselves online, it’s a better version of what we are that we show, or a nastier version. Political decisions have been made from our massed projections, and because all of us lie to some degree, how accurate could such data be? How manipulable we are depends on the lies we have been exposed to. No single persons life matters to politicians, only the numbers. As a photographer I have had to look at these lies directly, seen the impact of liars, and with each relevant exposure I have been witness to the damages that lies can do. Allow my quiet and irrelevant voice to now leave you. Forget George Floyd’s last words. ” I can’t breathe.” Forget Dominic Cummings myopic country wide road trip. Forget the lies. Forget that you are a statistical blip for a political to manipulate, because that is all any voter can be. Forget the care home deaths. Forget your humanity. Forget science. Forget all double standards. Forget gravity. Forget climate change. Forget racism. Forget yourself. As my irrelevant words of honesty leave you, getting quieter. Forget truth. Just forget it all and accept the lies. It’s your choice.

Silence.