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:
Andrew Neil criticises others for making 'Nazi analogies', but here he is, referring to an article in the Mail, amplified by Toby Young, suggesting a proposed boycott by a 'Pro-Palestine group' of venues showing #eurovision24 is "straight out of the early Nazi playbook".
The 'early Nazi playbook' involves propaganda, which like contemporary political & media propaganda works primarily not by lies, but rather by selective representation of information, distortion, fearmongering, demonisation of minority groups & misleading partisan misinformation.
The Mail's claim, amplified by Young & compared to "the early Nazi playbook" by Neil is 'Venues across the country have been forced to close their doors as they fear for their staff's safety after Pro-Palestine groups instructed their followers to hound pubs showing the contest'.
Divisive far-right extremist grifter Steve Laws is dangerous: he has a long & well documented history of using racist & Islamophobic rhetoric, harassing people, & trying to get decent people sacked. Laws' hateful rhetoric was even too toxic for Richard Tice's Reform UK.
Former UKIP candidate & far-right extremist Laws is a prominent so-called 'migrant hunter' who gets off on filming boats arriving in Dover. He constantly uses grotesque 1930s-style dehumanising rhetoric, & pushes the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
For decades, Big Tobacco cast doubt on the link between cancer & smoking. Today, doubts about climate science is fuelled by misinformation spread by politicians, news media & think tanks, invariably funded by those who benefit from fossil fuels.
The phrase "the spawn of communism" derives from early twentieth century US #nativism - the political strategy of promoting the interests of "native-born" inhabitants over those of immigrants.
But where does it come from, & what might it tell us about Jacob Rees-Mogg?
This thread is about how nativist ideology gave rise to the first US 'Red Scare', & how, long before TalkRadio or Fox & GB "News" existed, populist Christian broadcaster 'Father' Coughlin stoked the fears & prejudices of millions of his listeners using divisive nativist rhetoric.
The phrase "spawn of Communism" is now used by 'anti-woke' alt- & far-right nativists to describe everything from Democrats & socialists, through LGBTQ+ rights, CRT, & feminism, to 'identity politics' & 'environmentalism' - anyone, or anything, perceived by them to pose a threat.
GB "News"/TalkTV regular, Chair of the National Jewish Assembly & JC columnist, Gary Mond, liked posts by far-right extremist Pamela Geller (banned from entering the UK) & posted on FB in reference to Muslims “all [of] civilisation… is at war with these evil bastards”.
In January 2022, it was reported that then Board of Deputies Senior VP Gary Mond had been asked to “step down from his duties” while an investigation took place.
Evidence appeared to show Mond had liked two posts made by Geller in 2017, during his 6-yr stint sitting on the Board’s Defence Division, including one saying France was “finished” after voters picked current President Emmanuel Macron over far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.
Tory donor Bassim Haidar is the latest multimillionaire to say he'll leave the UK to avoid paying £millions in tax following plans to scrap the “non-dom” regime, which has allowed him & 68,800 other non-doms to avoid paying UK tax on overseas income for 225 years.
Haidar, who owns “more than 10 properties” in central London, including a £20 MILLION flat near Sloane Square, "gave" the @Conservatives £450,000 last year - including £10,000 worth of advertising to Lee Anderson in November, who promptly joined Reform UK. search.electoralcommission.org.uk/?currentPage=2…
For decades the UK news media, owned by fellow non-dom billionaires, regularly run stories warning how 'superrich wealth creators' will leave Britain.
It's a bold & often-made claim, but is there any truth in it? Will many - or indeed any - of our 68,800 non-doms leave Britain?