Thread by @docrussjackson

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.

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.

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:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1396479641460826113