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
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Never mind the milkshake. The real #Clacton story is that Nigel Farage is being escorted by fraudster & convicted felon "Posh George" Cottrell.
More on Cottrell and various other crooks with whom Farage has close links in this by me for @BylineTimes. bylinetimes.com/2023/07/24/far…
It is indeed George Cottrell with Farage in Clacton. After serving time in the US, he changed his name to George Co & moved to Montenegro, from which he made an abrupt exit after some very murky & allegedly illegal business involving cryptocurrency. insidebitcoins.com/news/crypto-sc…
.@BBCNews & other media outlets need to ask themselves why they're so extensively platforming Nigel Farage, the unelected "leader" of a far-right political "party" that's actually a private limited company, & a man who consorts with convicted fraudsters.
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.