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Adam Wagner @AdamWagner1
, 6 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
The UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty @Alston_UNSR has been investigating the situation in the UK - his preliminary findings are damning ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/…
Ideology to blame, says @Alston_UNSR
Also rightly points to the reduction in Legal Aid (the NHS for people in need of funded support to enforce their rights in court) as a key driver of the rise in poverty
Brexit will disproportionately affect the poor - due to reductions in funding and basic rights protections. How people on the left are supporting this catastrophe will be one for the historians to puzzle over
Universal Credit - good idea to consolidate benefits, terrible roll out and appears to be more focussed on saving money and sending messages
Conclusion should be a salutary reminder to those in power: in a rich economy poverty is a political choice
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Thatcher’s resignation
No wait it was Mandella’s release - that was earlier in the same year

No wait, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall

I’m not very good at this. It was stuff that happened in about 1989/90

I wasn’t very interested in politics
Wait, does Scott and Charlene’s wedding count?
Read 3 tweets
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Have dusted off my Nintendo Wii and playing through Super Mario Galaxy with my 8-year-old. Extreme fun and pleasure!
Such an amazingly imaginative and charming game and surprisingly good with two players
Watching a child play a classic Nintendo game for the first time is an amazing pleasure. These games are magical. Takes me back to playing Super Mario World on my friend's imported Super Famicom in 1991 #nerd
Read 4 tweets
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What a shame. I was heartened to see the Golders Green mosque, which got a lot of nasty criticism from within the Jewish community when it took over the building, was organising an outreach event commemorating Muslims who helped Jews during the Holocaust. Now cancelled.
Here is the story. Another example of the damaging hostility shown to Muslim-Jewish interfaith events by @RmSalih (see also his idiotic response to the @MitzvahDay chicken soup making event) journal.quilliaminternational.com/2019/01/04/the…
@RmSalih @MitzvahDay The event was a travelling exhibition by internationally renowned Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. Here’s what the chicken soup truther had to say
Read 4 tweets

Related threads

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I don't like the meme but in this case, it can be used to sum up Tory party policy quite wickedly (thank you @Protohedgehog for the idea) ... and wicked is the right word.
X : You seem quite angry?
Me : I'm certainly annoyed. It's not a recent thing, I've been going on about social mobility and inequality for decades. It's just in the last decade we've seen 120,000 lives lost, 14M in poverty and inequality increase. That justifies harsh words.
... what you need to understand is this channel "crisis", Sajid as red leader or gold commander or whatever, the timing of the Home Office announcement, the "Dover Port" crisis has all the hallmarks of misdirection from that which really matters. Hence my use of the meme.
Read 10 tweets
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It seems @YouTube removed the footage of the Q & A statement on the visit to the UK, by @Alston_UNSR, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty & human rights. @theresa_may & @AmberRuddHR both dismiss it - judge for yourself. Here it is in document form: ohchr.org/Documents/Issu…
I am going to use this thread to share some of the data that is referenced from this report. Because it matters and isn't shared enough.
A new measure of poverty for the UK: The final report of the Social Metrics Commission. September 2018. Full report - socialmetricscommission.org.uk/MEASURING-POVE…
Via @jrf_uk Destitution in the UK (June) 2018. Full Report: jrf.org.uk/report/destitu…

"1,550,000 people, including 365,000 children, were destitute in the UK during 2017. They could not afford to buy the bare essentials we all need to eat, stay warm, dry, & clean."
Read 27 tweets
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"The Government’s place is not to be assisting people who think they can’t make it on their own, it’s an absolute last emergency order” --> the words of UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty & Human Rights @Alston_UNSR should shame Britain & need to be publicised. My THREAD:
Professor Philip Alston said that 14 million people are in poverty in the UK (a figure the Government disputes) and that child poverty rates are “staggering” and are predicted to go up significantly over the next couple of years. #poverty #humanrights #austerity
The UN Special Rapporteur said he saw “a lot of misery” during his trip to the UK & met “a lot of people who feel the system is really there just to punish them”. People who could have gotten help in "yesterday's Britain" can no longer count on it #poverty #humanrights #austerity
Read 15 tweets
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Dear anyone who thinks they will vote Conservative when we have a #GeneralElection ...please read the below report from UN Rapporteur on extreme poverty & human rights before you cast your vote.

Let your conscience do the rest.

#ChildrenInNeed #Poverty
ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/…
“But through it all, one actor has stubbornly resisted seeing the situation for what it is. The Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial.”

@theresa_may @EstherMcVey1

#UNVisit2018 #poverty
“Even while devolved authorities in Scotland & N Ireland are frantically trying to devise ways to ‘mitigate’, or in other words counteract, at least the worst features of the Government’s benefits policy, Ministers insisted to me that all is well and running acc to plan”
#Poverty
Read 20 tweets
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UN special rapporteur @Alston_UNSR - who spent two weeks investigating UK #poverty at invitation of British govt - concludes that Tory ministers are "in denial" over the crisis caused by austerity, and their motivation is "an ideological one"
bit.ly/2TcTc34
His report is a damning indictment: "All of the evidence that I've seen, not withstanding the claims of the DWP, is that sanctions are usually counter production". Calls it a "tonne of bricks approach" which is counter to basic human rights, traditional British sense of fairness
Philip Alston says the poor will also "bear the brunt" of the economic fallout from #Brexit
Read 19 tweets
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The UK government has inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity: ⁦@Alston_UNSR⁩ theguardian.com/society/2018/n…
This is a scandalous state of affairs for govt ministers, including Esther McVey.

Brexit toxicity has spread so deep that critics of govt policies causing huge social harm aren’t heard, but decried as political saboteurs.

These people say trust us with your Brexit future.
Here are @Alston_UNSR ‘s damning findings on #poverty in the U.K. ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/…
Read 3 tweets

Trending hashtags

#Palestinians #austerity #UK #Kashmir #HASBARA #StandWithSaudiFeminists #WikiLeaks #JamalKashoggi #SisterKim #Occupation #India #NorthKoreanCheerleaders #NorthKorea #CivilRights #ChinaUAESaudi #FreeAziza #Putin #SalisburyChemicalAttack #Olympics #libya #UNVisit2018 #Russia #ClownsInAmerica #sanctions #Vermeer

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