Just imagine the response had PM Corbyn overseen 150,000 deaths! 🤯
A short #THREAD on the *REAL* causes of Britain's mass deaths.
Despite the brutality & disarray of the current Government, the causes of Britain's catastrophic response to #COVID have been brewing for decades.
Since the 2008 financial crash — caused by the reckless irresponsibility of a greedy & woefully under-regulated & deregulated financial sector — our once genuinely world-beating public services have been utterly decimated, with tragic consequences for millions of decent people.
Following the imposition of ideological #austerity, council funding has been cut by 49%.
Essential public services have either been privatised or replaced with faceless profit-motivated corporate outsourcers, with only a superficial concern for the places in which they operate.
The local knowledge, expertise, understanding, forums, processes, links & accountability, carefully built up over decades & designed to ensure comprehensive & joined up public services, have been systematically destroyed & replaced with uncaring profit-driven corporate entities.
Public health is about preventing disease, prolonging life & improving quality of life. The Right frame it as an attack on personal liberty. Public health has been continually re-organised in "efficiency" drives & systematically decimated by successive free-market obsessed Govts.
But free markets don't care about people or places: they are motivated by profit & targets, & profit is ALWAYS the most important consideration.
If targets are not met, the consequence for the corporation is simply less profit.
Lives are reduced to an entry on a balance sheet.
Successive UK Govts' faith in the power of free markets has been catastrophic: Britain's 150,000 deaths were ALL largely avoidable.
Comparable countries like Japan, with a higher density population & twice as many citizens as Britain, suffered just *13,000* COVID-related deaths.
Short-sighted, cruel, unnecessary & purely ideological cuts & privatisations left Britain & our underfunded & undervalued #NHS highly vulnerable to #coronavirus, while at the same time, £BILLIONS in taxpayers’ money was handed over to Tory donors, with disastrous consequences.
Free market obsessives are relaxed about grotesque disparities & 150,000 deaths: "we did everything we could" they lie.
Blinded by greed, arrogance & blind faith, they dismiss the inequality & suffering caused by their misguided beliefs.
Britain has shocking levels of deprivation: over 2,000 foodbanks, which nearly 4 million UK adults have been forced to use, & at least 2 million pensioners living in poverty, as are 4.3 million children. This hasn't happened overnight.
And all the Govt offer is more of the same.
Supported by the richest people on earth & the vast majority of print & broadcast media, as well as myriad think-tanks, institutions & other billionaire-funded organisations, the Government seek to polarise & distract us with trivia while they continue to exploit people & planet.
A handful of people have hoarded over $30 TRILLION offshore - they don't need any of it. A few hundred people could end global poverty & the use of fossil fuels within a few years. Instead, they choose to support Govts like ours, who protect their interests & enhance their power.
In 2017 we had best opportunity since 1945 to change course, to actively create a much fairer, greener world - & the entire establishment fought like dogs to ensure we carried on sailing into the abyss.
COVID was catastrophic, climate change will be cataclysmic.
KEEP FIGHTING.
For a longer examination of how vulnerable forty years of deregulated free market capitalism has left Britain:
Echoing objections to social-media fuelled violence from the government of the UK & others, the Chamber of Progress, a tech business advocacy group, is urging delusional adolescent billionaire Musk to take his leadership role at @X more seriously - or resign if he cannot do so.
Since July 29 when right-wing influencers made false claims on Twitter/@X & other social media platforms that falsely blamed the murder of three children on Muslims & asylum-seeking immigrants, dozens of far-right #FarageRiots erupted around the nation.
The #FarageRiots started with a lie – a fake name and false information that suggested the teenager alleged to have killed three young girls in #Southport was a Muslim asylum seeker. He was neither.
There is an uncomfortable hypocrisy at the heart of this story, which is that people didn’t react the same way when, earlier this year, a white man killed a 14-year-old black boy, Daniel Anjorin, with a sword.
While that perpetrator was treated as a horrific anomaly, the Southport attacker was viewed by racist rioters as representative of migrants & Muslims, despite being neither.
A psychologist explains the cognitive biases and psychological responses behind this disparate treatment.
Researchers have developed & articulated the concept of “everyday extremism” to acknowledge that extreme narratives derived from non-mainstream sources can become a part of mainstream political discourse via social media.
As usual, @elonmusk takes a half-truth, removes important context, then selectively presents a misleading claim implying something about contemporary society, in this case mobilising a 'white victimhood' racist dog whistle narrative to fuel anger, division, & engagement.
Musk presents the claim that the etymological origins of the word word slave derives solely from the exploitation of 'white people', rather than, say, emphasising how religious texts from Judaism, Islam & Christianity all recognise slaves as a separate class of people in society.
Before examining Musk's misleading claim, it's worth knowing that the word 'Slav' refers to a member of the most numerous ethnic & linguistic body of peoples in Europe, residing chiefly in eastern & southeastern Europe but extending also across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean.
#NEW opinion poll: "73% of the British public say that the riots are shaming rather than standing up for Britain, & the public overwhelmingly believe that those helping clear up after the riots (87%) represent British values." - @Moreincommon_ 🇬🇧
Rather than attitudes to the riots sitting in two contrasting pro- & anti-riots camps, public opinion is akin to Russian Dolls: small groups are willing to condone the riots but much bigger groups with opinions cited as motivation for the violence condemn it without hesitation.
The smallest group are those who express support for the unrest: 7% of the public say they are ashamed Britain is a multi-ethnic country; 8% think violent demonstrations outside asylum seeker accommodation are acceptable; & the 11% who have a positive opinion of Tommy Robinson.