1. The thing is, everyone falls into the same pattern time and time again:
a) Outrage on Twitter 2) Sign petitions 3) Email our MPs 4) Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.
2. (You know I'm pee'd off if my come in paragraphs with sub-paragraphs, btw)
3. Then tomorrow or the next day it will be overtaken by some new scandal, and nobody will even remember, or if they do, will barely care.
Round and round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.
4. The ERG headbangers, notionally led by our PM, actually shut down Parliament illegally. Do you remember that? To run down the Brexit clock and make sure there was no Vote of No Confidence until they were ready for it, they wrecked the constitution.
5. Don't get me started on the No Deal Brexit they were clamouring for, for years. Or the pure evil of the govt's response to Covid. And Dominic Cummings. Remember him? Because he was running the govt., not Johnson.
6. So yeah, we can all have a good moan on social media about how corrupt the govt. is, but are any of you actually going to DO anything about it? Are you still clinging on to the delusion that Sir Keith will ride up on his white horse and save you all?
7. Listen very carefully. I will say this only once:
You cannot rely on a system that is corrupt to its core to reform itself, no matter what "side" MPs claim to be on.
8. We are facing the worst existential crises in living memory. Capitalism has run out of corporations to asset-strip, and less-developed countries to "structurally adjust" to leech dry, so now they are moving on to devour developed countries.
9. The people running the country are dismantling every asset our parents and grandparents built, and stripping every last penny out of country while they still can.
10. You have two options:
a) kvetch all day on social media
b) do something.
I vote we do something.
Organise with like-minded people. Build a movement in your communities. Get active with NGOs. Get off your butts and create the country you want to live in, from the ground up.
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Controversial POV - I support everything @AntiRacismDay does, but what Saturday showed us is clear: shouting "Racists" and "Fascists!" in peoples faces will never address racism and fascism. This has to start with dialogue. 1/
2/ You can't refute deeply-held beliefs, however delusional they might be, by simply screaming at people that they're wrong/ignorant/beyond the pale. You have to dismantle those beliefs by showing WHY they are delusional.
3/We are up against powerful mega-rich forces that have poisoned discourse for decades. The "no politics no sex no religion" dinner party rules, the lack of political education from an early age means the average person sees politics as tribalism, like supporting a footy team
🧵1. I've said before: there is nothing "organic" or "spontaneous" about the anti-asylum protests. I started noticing stuff in my local FB community page around 2 years ago. Wild claims about "foreign looking men" trying to snatch their child out of a trolly in Tesco >
2. Tesco employees and police denied it had happened, but the story was out there. Chip. Chip. Chip away, as it started with jokes about asylum hotels, then the hotel occupants, then lurid stories - unverifiable of course - of people being stopped and surrounded in their cars >>
3. And if the police siad nothing or denied it, it was because they were "woke" with their "rainbow flags" and "weren't allowed to warn people". I reiterate: none of it was verigiable. Nothing to cross-reference it.
1. Hey, ECHR Haters.
Do you know what an Osman Warning is?
It is when the police are obliged by law to warn you if they believe there is a genuine, credible threat against your life.
You know where it comes from?
Article 2 ECHR.
2. None of you are too happy about the idea of digital ID's either, are you? Me neither. Do you know what protects us from that sort of interference with our private life?
Article 8 ECHR.
3. While we are on the subject of Article 8, that is what protects your right to marry who you want to marry (within reason -you can't marry a close family member or a child, or someone who is already married).
Let us, please, use the second part of this documentary as our own blue-print. We cannot allow Netanyahu and his administration to escape justice in the way Rajapaksa and his government have escaped.
37m25s into the second video (link below), one David Miliband of this parish:
"There was a propaganda battle clearly taking place in which it was very important for the Rajapaksa government to insist on the "whiter than white" nature of its own approach in order to get through this final phase, final weeks, ultimately final days of the war".
Miliband, in a released document, called the Sri Lankan government "liars". Is there no statesman prepared to stand up and call the Israeli government liars? Is there no statesman with sufficient gravitas and stature on the world stage to prevent this sickening repeat of history, where governments commit war crimes in plain sight and walk away with complete impunity? channel4.com/programmes/sri…
Was pondering earlier that, in many respects, those who suffered the ordeal by fire during the Corbyn years, being daubed as antisemites when they weren't, have actually had an enormous impact. 1/
2/ I distinctly remember the first time I was called an antisemite. It was on here, of course, and led to fear and soul-searching and self-reflection and apology at various levels over different periods.
3/ but gradually, as it all unravelled people began to see what was going on. And now nobody gives a monkeys if, in the face of standing up for peace and justice and equity, bad actors call us nasty names. Because lives are more important. Peace is more important.
As someone who spent a stint studying Third World Development, before switching to Law (then, subsequently did an MA in Reconciliation and Peacebuilding [brazen appeal to authority. Shut up!] what I see happening in the UK now is a Structural Adjustment Policy 1/
2/ SAP's were the way in which countries from the developed North intervened in the less-developed South: "We will provide funding if you roll back on public services, education, etc., focus on restructuring to the benefit of big business through transport infrastructure" etc.
3/ Thing is, vampire capitalists ran out of poor countries they could exploit. So then they started on the poorer of the rich EU nations - who remembers the PIGS? Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain in the last global recession, and how they were bled dry by oligarchs?