Thread by @gavingsmith

(Long thread I'm afraid.)

So you may have seen this story recently: theguardian.com/politics/2019/…

And you may well be thinking that it's election time, and it's the Guardian, exaggeration, crazy leftwing conspiracy theory etc. etc.

Except this has been going on for a while now:

ox.ac.uk/news/2017-02-2…

And those crazed Bolsheviks at the Royal Society of Medicine: rsm.ac.uk/media-releases…

There are reports going back as far as 2015 warning about this. Now I've heard the numbers disputed, that's fine but please support that with evidence that has gone through the same academic rigour that the report in the Journal for the Royal Society of Medicine did.

I've heard it said that the Tories didn't set out to kill people: except the Tories knew of these reports and continued with the Austerity policies in the full knowledge that it would cause more deaths.

Also there's a degree of common sense when you put the cost of mistakes made by society's richest (the Credit Crunch) on society's poorest there is going to be a shortfall.

Lets take the more conservative estimate of of 30,000 deaths from the JRSM's report in 2017 (and remember the policies were kept in place, nothing has changed since then).

Lets put that into perspective with the things that drive us as a society mad, the sort of things that make the Daily Mail froth at the mouth:

Deaths From Terrorism Since 2001: According to official data from 11 September 2001 to 31 March 2016,
there were 54 deaths in Great Britain as a direct result of terrorist acts.
Source: file:///Users/gavinsmith/Downloads/CBP-7613.pdf

Deaths as a Result of the Troubles late 60s to 1998 (Good Friday Agreement): 3,532
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troub…

British military deaths in the Iraq War: 179
Source: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-106375…

British military deaths in Afghanistan War: 454
Source: gov.uk/government/fie…

Knife Deaths in the last ten years (during the Coalition and Tory Governments): Between 2500-3000 (do feel free to check my maths)
Source: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-427490… and researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefi… and theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/o…

Number of British people to have died in terrorist attacks since 1970: 3395
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism…

So taking the conservative JSRM estimate from 2017 that means that Tory policies are almost ten times more dangerous to British people than all the terrorist attacks that have happened in the UK since 1970!

Take the less conservative estimate from 2019 and you're looking at them being nearly forty times more dangerous to British people.

That's almost twice the official estimated deaths during the Terror in post-revolutionary France.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_…

I'm sorry if this offends you, I'm sorry if you think these comparisons are unfair or distasteful (and they are) but I just can't get away from this, why we don't care about this when we go to the ballot box.

I can't understand how we're not morally culpable when we know this and still vote for the Tories.

Because even if we ignore the rise in homelessness, the rise in poverty, the malnourished children, the constant lies and sleaze, the cuts and further privatisation of the NHS, the Tories total inability to answer a straight question, their rank cowardice...

...even if we only vote out of selfishness, how is this in our best interest?

Then again maybe you're all right. This is mostly a problem for the poor, the sick and the old.

And you're never going to be

Poor.

Sick.

Or Old.

Right?