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

Sep 15
🧵

Tommy Robinson claimed his protest drew “three million patriots”. The Met Police reported 110,000.

Prof Milad Haghani, an actual world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes, estimates “about 56,000... However I run the numbers, it’s very difficult to make it to 100,000.” Image
Unlike shameless liar and multiply-convicted violent far-right coke-snorting thug Tommeh, Prof Haghani is a world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes. He leads geospatial transport planning initiatives, and is an expert in crowd dynamics.

Tommeh is a world-leading grifter. Image
Compulsive shameless liar Tommy Robinson made the laughable claim that his 'Unite (Divide) The Kingdom' rally was “officially the biggest protest in British history.” 🤥

In reality, as only about 56,000 people attended, it struggled to scrape the top TWENTY. 😂 Image
Read 7 tweets
Sep 13
🧵

OK, I'll bite.

The word Fascism isn't 'meaningless'.

To spell out why, we need to unpack both the underlying implication of Andrew Doyle's argument and the reasons why it fails to adequately account for contemporary political dangers. Image
Andrew Doyle asserts that the term "fascism" is misused to the point of recklessness, echoing George Orwell’s 1944 observation that the word had been rendered meaningless. Doyle’s concern is not uncommon—but imho, it’s ultimately misplaced, especially in today’s context.
While it’s true that “fascism” is sometimes deployed rhetorically or hyperbolically (eg by Trump), Doyle’s framing dangerously downplays the genuine resurgence of fascist-adjacent movements across the Western world and undermines the analytical clarity necessary to confront them. Image
Read 23 tweets
Sep 8
🧵

Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response. Image
A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest.

Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/s…
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.

Read 12 tweets
Aug 31
🧵

Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.

Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness. Image
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England. Image
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.

These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all. Image
Read 60 tweets
Aug 28
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.

@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.

@Rylan
Read 23 tweets
Aug 27
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
Image
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions

The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.

It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.

The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”. 

Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.

Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.

x.com/docrussjackson…
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.

These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.

It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.

The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”
Read 13 tweets

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