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30 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
1 in 5 of the 2019 @Conservatives worked in lobbying or PR for corporate interests, & four of Britain’s largest lobbying firms now have at least one former employee in parliament.

Britain is a for-profit corporation, run on behalf powerful shareholders.

independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
Lobbying is a problem for democracy as it often substitutes 'special' interests for the interests expressed by voters, exacerbated by a lack of transparency: knowledge of lobbyists' activities is not sufficiently available to allow scrutiny or informed democratic decision making.
The transition from welfarism & social democracy to neoliberalism has significantly heightened the problem of lobbying because it has triggered a massive increase in the practice.

The perception & the fact of undue corporate influence has thereby dramatically increased.
The neoliberalisation of the public sphere has progressed further in Britain than in any other European country, & consequently, the quality of our democratic process has been significantly undermined.

Britain is now run for the rich, by the rich.

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More from @docrussjackson

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31 Mar
Boris Johnson's fake race commission report is a #whitewash & an insult to UK ethnic minorities.

Despite overwhelming evidence, it DENIES institutional racism, & borrowing from the the National Front, has the gall to focus on the "white working class".

theguardian.com/p/gqm3m/stw
From #Windrush & #Grenfell to the disproportionate amount of deaths in childbirth, from stop & search to #COVID-related deaths - evidence of institutional & structural racism is CRYSTAL CLEAR.

What a nasty, grotesque & disturbing insult to millions of decent British people. ImageImageImageImage
Foregrounding "white working class" educational attainment is pure gaslighting: in 2019 the least educational progress was made by Irish Traveller & Gypsy/Roma Heritage kids, technically "white working class" - but what a grotesque & contemptuous ideological distortion of truth. ImageImage
Read 5 tweets
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30 Mar
Jews escaping the Nazis were asylum seekers.

Instead of pandering to racists, bigots, & the far-right, the UK Govt should welcome asylum seekers with open arms - not whip up anger & hatred by demonizing them & those who help them.

#StandUpForAsylum

act.refugee-action.org.uk/page/74354/sub…
Sadly, rabid intolerance - among both press & government - has a strong British pedigree.

The Daily Mail has been an 'anti-alien' newspaper since the 1900s - great continuity - & the Daily Express on the run-up to the EU referendum was utterly grotesque.

theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08…
These antiquated, inhumane, & revolting attitudes appearing in our press & amplified by the UK Govt - especially the cruel & shameless Home Secretary Priti Patel - permeate British society & keep rancid ideas alive which belong in the dustbin of history.

Read 4 tweets
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29 Mar
A THREAD about neoliberalism & corporate propaganda.

For forty years, neoliberal economic & political policies have profoundly shaped our present by introducing a form of hyper-deregulated hyper-free-market capitalism, with four main attributes:
1 Shrinking the role of the state;

2 Centrality of the market to enable the buying & selling of goods & services & drive economic growth

3 Risk is a central organising concept;

4 Collective responsibility replaced with a competitive individualism driven by self-responsibility.
A corporation is basically a large company or group of companies authorised to act as a single entity & recognized as such in law: a legal entity distinct from its owners, which enjoys most of the rights & responsibilities that individuals possess.
Read 90 tweets
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27 Mar
In the wake of the death of Ian Tomlinson at the London G20 protests in 2009, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary proposed a number of reforms aimed at making public order policing strategies more ‘human-rights compliant’.

#BristolProtests

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
One significant development was the introduction of 'Protest Liaison Officers' whose role is supposed to be to build links between police & protesters through the establishment of dialogue & relationships based on trust.

Obviously, given scenes in Bristol, this is not the case.
Scholars started to examine the complex interplay between these practices & the more overt forms of Police coercion & control experienced by protesters.

This research shows that official accounts contrast sharply with the experiences & material conditions faced by protesters.
Read 4 tweets
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27 Mar
I wonder if Laurence Fox knows that in 2017 the US alt-right embraced #milk as a symbol of white supremacism, with infamous white supremacist Richard Spencer & far-right 'social media personality' Tim 'Baked Alaska' Treadstone both adding milk symbols to their Twitter profiles? ImageImageImage
Many dismiss bigoted rants on #MilkTwitter as nothing more than irony targeting the humourless PC brigade. But irony/ambiguity are used by alt-right trolls who seek to exploit Poe’s Law (it’s almost impossible to distinguish satire from sincerity online.)

inews.co.uk/news/world/whi…
Two of the most notorious far-right accounts in America - using the milk symbol - 'just for laughs'.

Why am I bothering with this? I think winking at the far-right to appear 'edgy' is irresponsible, & 'd prefer the UK not to simply replicate the USA over the last few years. ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
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25 Mar
Academic hat on.

🇬🇧 #Flag THREAD 🇬🇧

We know #flags are powerful symbols of national identity, & we know they have different meanings, for different individuals, & in different countries, largely dependent upon history.

But generally, this a surprisingly under-researched area.
#Flags evoke a very wide range of emotions, including pride, patriotism, egalitarianism & unity. However, we also know they can evoke a sense of national superiority.

They've been widely used as #propaganda, both good & bad.

The Nazis focused on division & national superiority.
I just want to flag up (see what I did there?) some interesting research.

The first is from 2017: 'What Do National Flags Stand for? - An Exploration of Associations Across 11 Countries'

pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles…
Read 26 tweets

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