I could not dig: I dared not to rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall server me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
- Rudyard Kipling, 'A Dead Statesman'
If you liked my version of Kipling's 'If', there are some more poems on my blog here (not all parodies): compostability.wordpress.com
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I wrote about Isaac Levido, Topham Guerin, Palantir & the intersection between dark money-funded corporate lobbying & political dirty tricks for @BylineTimes.
@BylineTimes @JolyonMaugham Incidentally, I wonder if Palantir will be showing its appreciation for the award of massive NHS data contracts by contributing its big-data resources for political campaigning purposes, perhaps "unofficially".
That said, the BBC has many excellent journalists, locally & nationally - here's BBC News East reporting in depth on why the Green Party did so well in Suffolk. The political bias comes from much higher up within the organisation. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…
And here's BBC Politics West reporting on big @TheGreenParty wins in the Forest of Dean & talking to @carla_denyer about Greens winning on Jacob Rees Mogg's doorstep in North East Somerset.
BBC reporting on the amazing #GreenWave has been much better locally than nationally.
The photo of Nigel Farage embracing Andrew Tate was taken at the 2019 CPAC conference, where Tate was also pictured with an assortment of other far-right creeps incl. Paul Joseph Watson & Jack Posobiec.
Tate was already notorious for his vicious misogyny.
Later that year. Andrew Tate invited some of his far-right pals to Romania, including Mike Cernovich (famous for claiming that date rape "does not exist"). Cernovich tweeted that it was a "first class event".
And here's Andrew Tate with Donald Trump Jr at Trump Tower, & with Candace Owens of the influential far-right group Turning Point (its UK branch has been endorsed by Priti Patel & Jacob Rees-Mogg). Tate is not just a virulent misogynist under investigation for alleged rape...
1/ Liz Truss's government is clearly trying to destroy the (already degraded) social contract that underwrote the NHS and the post-war welfare state.
It's doing this on the basis of an extreme version of Hayek's "free-market" ideology, the moving spirit of Britannia Unchained.
2/ Crises present good opportunities for ideologically motivated extremists to push through policies that might have seemed unthinkable before, as Naomi Klein described in The Shock Doctrine.
Pinochet imposed precisely the same sort of ideology on Chile after seizing power.
3/ Truss's extremist ideology will not produce the prosperity it promises, though it will make some already very rich people even richer.
For everyone else, it will only deepen extreme poverty & inequality, and drive social chaos & despair.
Look, Carrie Johnson was eminently suited to a £100k FO job. Here she is in 2012 with the Russian Ambassador at the launch of Conservative Friends of Russia, set up by the later CEO of Vote Leave with the help of Russian agent Sergey Nalobin. #Carriegate westcountryvoices.co.uk/tough-times-fo…
...at least, I'm pretty sure this is Carrie Johnson (then Symonds). Also pictured here is John Whittingdale MP, a founder member of Conservative Friends of Russia, whom she accompanied to this delightful event, where raffle prizes included a biography of Putin. #Carriegate
Carrie Johnson & the Tory MPs at the launch of Conservative Friends of Russia must have known the nature of Putin's regime. Putin had already presided over massacres in Chechnya, invaded Georgia & ordered the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London with radioactive polonium.
Both Hitler & Mussolini hated lawyers and often abused them. They saw the rule of law as a barrier to their exercise of absolute power, in the name of "the will of the people". #ToryFascists
... e.g. Hitler: : "I shall not rest until every German sees that it is a shameful thing to be a lawyer." #ToryFascists
Mussolini made himself dictator to put himself beyond the law when his crimes came under investigation. Fascists will make laws to give a legal veneer to oppression, but an independent judiciary is completely antithetical to fascism. #ToryFascists washingtonpost.com/news/democracy…