The magnificent @frannyarmstrong has been hard at work editing the world's first live investigative documentary, #Rivercide, down to 60 crisp and compelling minutes. You can watch it any time for free at Here's a glimpse, prangs, filth and all.
Here's the shocking pollution event we covered on the River Llynfi. Disgracefully, no one from @NatResWales turned up for 13 hours, by which time the pulse of poison had passed, making it much harder to identify the culprit. Watch the whole movie here:
Here's the moment at which two citizen scientists, *doing the work our governments should have done*, reveal the major cause of death of one of the UK's most treasured and protected rivers, the Wye. See the rest on
We spoke to the brilliantly articulate @Feargal_Sharkey, the most effective rivers campaigner in the UK (and a hero from my teenage years). The story he has to tell will make your jaw hit the floor. Part of
Talking of heroes ... here's @BZephaniah, discussing the decline of our rivers and reading his astonishing, galvanising poem, City River Blues. All in #Rivercide at
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#IDthought 6: At every general election, we are faced with a binary choice. With one cross, we are deemed to have signalled our agreement everything in a party’s manifesto and everything else – if it wins – it can ram through Parliament over the next five years. 🧵
It’s not that different from the cross or thumbprint with which indigenous people were asked to sign treaties with European colonists, which in some cases they were unable to read. It arises from the same mode and style of governance.
There is no means of refining our choice, of accepting some items and rejecting others. With one decision, we are presumed to have consented to thousands of further decisions. We do not accept the principle of presumed consent in sex. Why should we accept it in politics?
#IDthought 5: Until the neoliberal era, inequality declined for some 60 years. From the 1980s onwards, it returned with a vengeance. Since 1989, America’s super-rich have grown about $21 trillion richer. The poorest 50 per cent, by contrast, have become $900 billion poorer.🧵
Why? Because trade unions were crushed. Because tax rates for the very rich were slashed. Because any regulation that big business viewed as constricting was loosened or eliminated. And, perhaps most importantly, because *rents* were allowed to soar.
I don’t just mean housing rents. I mean all *access fees* to essential services that have been captured by private wealth: water, energy, health, railways etc. And the interest payments arising from the financialisation of higher education.
#IDthought 1: Throughout the media we see an unremitting, visceral defence of capitalism, but seldom an attempt to define it, or to explain how it might differ from other economic systems. We propose a definition that seeks to distinguish it from other forms of economic activity
I did produce a neater definition, which has the virtue of parsimony, but the disadvantage of being incomprehensible to almost everyone.
"Capitalism is an economic system that both creates and destroys its own n-dimensional hypervolume."
1. This week’s column is about something we badly want to believe, regardless of the evidence: that livestock farms are benign and harmonious. Why? Mostly, I think, because it chimes with books and cartoons we see as very young children. Also: a threadtheguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. It discusses a film enjoying unexpected success in UK cinemas: Six Inches of Soil. In many ways, it’s a good film. But it tells us a story we want to hear, and in some respects is misleading and wrong. sixinchesofsoil.org
3. This is especially the case with the carbon calculations for the cattle farm it features: first we see a temporary, cyclical gain reported as making the farm carbon negative. Then entirely hypothetical figures treated as if they are real. Both cases are serious misinformation
1. There’s a telling sequence in the Netflix docuseries Raël. A completely mad cult claims, without a jot of evidence, to have cloned a human. And the world’s media fall for it, hook, line and sinker. All it took to fool them was 2 people in white coats and some lab equipment.🧵
2. What do we learn from this?
A. That the media is as susceptible to evident BS as the members of the crazy cult.
B. That it has a massive diversity problem – and not just the one(s) you are probably thinking of.
3. In any major newsroom, just about the only people with science degrees are specialist reporters. Almost without exception, the senior staff and main decision-makers have non-science degrees. Their knowledge of basic science is approximately zero.
Nowadays, when you discuss the far right, people insist “That’s not far right!”.
Folk who have plainly shifted to the far right claim to have “transcended left and right”. Or state that the terms have no meaning.
What’s going on?
Hold onto your seats, it’s a wild ride. 🧵
For the past few years there has been a concerted effort on the far right to reposition Nazism and fascism as left/socialist movements.
I know, I know, but bear with me, because this is now a widespread thing, and unsuspecting people have been fooled by it.
As usual with these matters, it began - and continues - with utter blithering idiocy. “Nazism stands for National Socialism: ergo it’s socialism.” Hitler and Goebbels both mentioned socialism in public statements, therefore they were socialists.