GET A GRIP Profile picture
Jun 3, 2021 14 tweets 6 min read Read on X
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. Image
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. Image
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. Image
This is fundamentally about #inequality.

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. Image
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. Image
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. ImageImageImage
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. ImageImageImage
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. Image
For a longer examination of how vulnerable forty years of deregulated free market capitalism has left Britain:

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More from @docrussjackson

Mar 25
🧵 Online #Incel communities foster misogyny, resentment & extremism, which have led to multiple murderous attacks in the US & UK, motivated by hatred toward women.

Their echo chambers also amplify mental health issues like isolation & anger, radicalizing vulnerable men & boys. Image
In the US, proven murders attributable to incels include: Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 & injured 14 in a shooting & stabbing spree; Lyndon McLeod shot & killed 5; & Mauricio Garcia shot & killed 8 & injured 7.

In the UK, Jake Davison shot & killed 5, including a 3-year-old girl. Image
Farage defended his Reform UK MP who was jailed for repeatedly kicking his girlfriend (which wasn't disclosed to voters before he was elected), & in 2014, he dismissed as "just a joke" an MEP's comment that beating women "helps bring wives back to Earth."

Image
Read 14 tweets
Mar 19
#THREAD

When is a “think tank” not a think tank?

A 🧵 about how spurious and inflammatory claims, based on unevidenced cherry-picked data, are passed off as truth by partisan private limited companies and used as a weapon to divide voters and to scapegoat and demonise migrants. Image
At 1.32pm on Monday 10th March, The Telegraph published the claim that based on “the first data analysis of its kind. Data from the Ministry of Justice, obtained under freedom of information laws,” shows that “Foreigners [are] convicted of nearly a quarter of sex crimes.” Image
Chris Philp, shadow home secretary, said the figures were “shocking.”

Shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, said: “Not only is mass migration making us poorer, but this data proves it’s also making us dramatically less safe.”

A Govt spokesman did not dispute the figures. Image
Read 40 tweets
Mar 17
🧵

Democracy is under attack. As with the US, Italy is 1 of 5 European Govts undermining the rule of law ‘in nearly all aspects’, with changes to the judiciary & a “heavy intolerance to media criticism”, fueling Europe’s deepening “democratic recession”.

theguardian.com/world/2025/mar…
A report by Civil Liberties Union for Europe said Italy was one of five “dismantlers” – with Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania & Slovakia – that “intentionally undermine the rule of law in nearly all aspects”.

Hungary has long been an “electoral autocracy.”

theguardian.com/world/2022/sep…
“Europe’s democratic recession has deepened.”

The report highlights judicial systems subject to political manipulation, weak law enforcement against corruption, overuse of fast-track legislative procedures, harassment of journalists & growing restrictions on peaceful protests.
Read 16 tweets
Mar 14
🧵

Many of Britain's most vocal 'anti-establishment' voices attended some of the most expensive schools on earth.

These broken boys masquerade as 'anti-elite' while serving the interests of the ultrarich by turning working class people against each other using 'Divide & Rule'. Image
Moscow born Konstantin Vadimovich Kisin came to the UK aged 11 & was sent to Clifton College boarding school (current fees: up to £18,360/term).

He recently said about Rishi Sunak "He’s a brown Hindu; how is he English?" He's a regular speaker at Paul Marshall's ARC conference. Image
Rupert James Graham Lowe was sent to Radley College, an all-boys independent boarding school (current fees: up to £19,200/term).

Lowe worked in the City of London for companies such as Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings Bank. Image
Read 13 tweets
Feb 28
🧵

Jacob Rees-Mogg's dad's 1997 book was originally called The Sovereign Individual: *How to Survive & Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State*😱

It predicted “cybercurrency,” the decline of nation-states & the ascendance of a “cognitive elite” who would rule the world.
My own summary is above, but journalist @gilduran76 - of the brilliant #FrameLab - has now written his own summary, review and interpretation of it, which I reproduce with a few links and commentary, below.

Access his original (25 February) article here:

thenerdreich.com/the-sovereign-…
To fully understand Silicon Valley’s project to destroy democracy, read 'The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State.'

In 1999, it was rebranded as 'The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.' Image
Read 39 tweets
Feb 17
#THREAD

Life was demonstrably worse in the 1979 than it is today.

Zymunt Bauman calls this yearning for an imagined past, ‘retrotopia’, in which the ‘Volk’ (the ‘simple folk’, who Reform UK claim to represent) are constructed as homogenous, Christian, white, & ‘indigenous’. Image
Life was demonstrably inferior in the 1970s compared to today for almost everyone in England.

Life expectancy in the UK in 1980 was 71 for men and 77 for women. By 2019, life expectancy at birth in England had increased to 79 years for men & 83.5 for women.
1. Economic Hardship

In 1979, the UK economy was struggling with high inflation, unemployment, and a budget deficit. This eroded purchasing power, making essentials like food, clothing, and housing more expensive relative to wages. "Stagflation" was a significant problem. Image
Read 40 tweets

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