Yet somehow, these privileged parasites managed to convince millions of people that they are heroically battling against "the elite": by which they appear to mean anyone with a degree.
All the while, they work on behalf of the true elite: the billionaire proprietors of the newspapers, the hedge fund managers, the private equity companies, the multimillionaire funders of the Conservative Party.
It's the most effective con in recent British political history.
To the true elite, tax avoidance is not just a game, but almost a sacred duty.
It makes the rest of us feel like saps, for doing our duty to each other, while they wriggle out of it.
Nevertheless, we should be proud pay our taxes in full.
I believe that, as in Scandanavia, we should all be able see how much other people are paying. reuters.com/article/us-pan…
To this end, I publish my own income tax payments.
They are a LOT higher than Donald Trump's: monbiot.com/registry-of-in…
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We're going into partial lockdown partly because of the failure of test and trace.
It has failed because instead of using the vast pool of expertise in the public sector (local and national), the government handed the contracts to incompetent profiteers.
It put someone in charge whose sole qualification appears to be that she moves in the same social circle as government ministers. In other words, she's "one of us".
Then, when Dido Harding failed catastrophically, it gave her an even bigger job.
The Tory mantra, repeated for 40 years like a stuck record, is that the public sector is wasteful and inefficient, while the private sector is lean and competitive.
Yet the waste and inefficiency caused by privatising essential public health functions is off the scale.
If the passion and energy that some on the left invest in attacking other people on the left were directed instead at the Conservatives, they might never win another election.
Please everyone: less infighting, more perspective.
All I know is this:
Despite supporting Jeremy Corbyn, and devoting most of a year (unpaid) to his Land for the Many report,
and despite trying, in all the work I do, to hold power to account
I get more flak from the left than the right.
It's such a waste of time and energy.
It seems to me like classic displacement activity.
The government has an 80-seat majority
It is grabbing power with both fists
There is little we can do to stop it
So let's attack each other instead
I understand the grief and anger. But let's not turn it on each other.
Before I begin this thread, let me make it clear that I do not in any way blame Dominic Cummings or Dido Harding for their antecedents. What interests me is the way power is acquired, transmitted and sustained in the United Kingdom.
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2. This is Field Marshall Sir John Harding. In 1949, he was sent to Malaya to suppress the insurgency. British actions were notoriously brutal, using Agent Orange, scorched earth campaigns, hunger as a weapon and concentration camps. It’s not clear how much of this he did.
3. From 1952, as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, he advised the British government on suppressing the Kikuyu revolt in Kenya. This involved the mass murder of civilians, torture, mutilation and mass imprisonment in concentration camps and fortified villages.
I'm getting a pile-on of people claiming I can't write about #JulianAssange for the Guardian, because I'd immediately be sacked.
Inconveniently for this narrative, the exact article they're demanding I write has already been published ... by the Guardian. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
But let's not allow the facts to spoil a good conspiracy theory.
It turns out that the people spreading this rumour are the same ones who spread the false story that Steve Bell had been sacked from the Guardian.
They may not agree with everything the Guardian says and does (nor do I), but they shouldn't propagate lies.
An extraordinary shift, and credit where it's due.
BUT: the great unsayable, that the BBC won't allow anyone to voice on air, is that the driver of planetary destruction is not "excess" capitalism, but capitalism itself. bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
What is Trump?
He’s the culmination of decades of oligarchic power.
Decades in which billionaires became the motive force of politics.
Dethroning Trump in November is crucial. But the bigger task is dethroning the system that made him possible.
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We can’t expect Biden to do this. His sole political virtue (an important one) is that he’s not Trump. We need to see a grassroots revolution in the Democratic Party, that brings people like @AOC and @CoriBush to the fore, overthrows the power of money and puts the people first.
Ultimately, the aims should include overturning Citizens United, banning major donations, stamping out dark money, regulating Facebook and turning the US, for the first time in its history, into a functioning democracy, where every adult has a vote and every vote has equal weight