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@docrussjackson
Nov 9, 2021 • 13 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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Keep Calm & Carry On was part of a motivational poster campaign designed by the Ministry of Information in 1939. Intended to raise the morale of the British public, the campaign was cancelled following criticism: people regarded the message as 'patronising & divisive'.👇
2.5million copies were printed but only a handful ever appeared in public. In 1940 stocks were pulped. Design historian Susannah Walker regards the Keep Calm campaign as "a resounding failure" & reflective of a misjudgement by upper-class civil servants of the mood of the people.
'Keep Calm & Carry On' is evocative of the antiquated & largely mythical upper class Victorian belief in long departed British stoicism – the "stiff upper lip", self-discipline, fortitude, & remaining calm in adversity – a cliché of British sensibility.

Then, in 2000, a co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, was sorting through a box of second-hand books bought at auction when he uncovered an original poster.

It was framed & hung up by the cash register, & it attracted so much interest that they began to produce & sell copies.
In early 2012, Stuart & Mary Manley of Barter Books debuted an informational short film, 'The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On', providing visual insight into the modernisation and commercialisation of the design and the phrase.

In late 2005, a Guardian journalist featured the replica posters as a Christmas gift suggestion, raising their profile further.

It was thought that only two original copies survived until a collection of 15 was brought in to the Antiques Roadshow in 2012.
huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/antiques…
In August 2011, it was reported that a UK-based company called 'Keep Calm and Carry On' Ltd had registered the slogan as a community trade mark in the EU & USA, after failing to obtain its registration as a trademark in the United Kingdom.
The company issued a take-down request against a seller of Keep Calm & Carry On products, but their right to claim the trademark was questioned, as the slogan was used before registration & was not recognisable as indicating trade origin.

bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-150…
An application was submitted to cancel the registration on the grounds that the words were too widely used for one person to own the exclusive rights, but the request for cancellation was rejected & the trade mark is still protected in all EU countries.

Sunlit uplands!
Political critic Owen Hatherley, author of The Ministry of Nostalgia: “It is a nostalgia for the state of being repressed.”

What bewilders him is why so many evince a dewy-eyed nostalgia for a time that they’ve not experienced, if it ever existed at all.
lareviewofbooks.org/article/keep-c…
It's a story of failed wartime propaganda, a mythical British identity constructed by repressive elites & corporate power.

Facing the multiple crises of corruption, COVID & climate change, the phrase resonates, but the LAST thing we should be do response is keep calm & carry on.
As Britain lurches from crisis to crisis, the press have a predictable response. This is post-war propaganda on an unprecedented scale.

But let's NOT keep calm & carry on: let's get angry & fight for a fairer, safer, greener, less divided, more peaceful & better governed future.

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More from @docrussjackson

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Nov 21
🧵

In May, Reform UK became the UK’s first party to accept crypto donations; experts warned of major money-laundering and foreign interference risks.

The NCA says Tether—backed by Reform’s £13.7M donor Christopher Harborne—has been used by Russia to fund its war in Ukraine. Image
A multibillion-dollar scheme that exchanges cash from drug and gun sales in the UK for crypto—digital tokens hiding users’ identities—has enabling “sanctions evasions and the highest levels of organised crime, including providing money-laundering services to the Russian state”.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
In 2023, the hedge fund co-founded by GB "News" owner Paul Marshall, who employs 60% of anti-Net Zero Reform UK's MPs, had £1.8 BILLION invested in fossil fuel firms.

Harborne (who has Thai citizenship under the name 'Chakrit Sakunkrit) also makes money from fossil fuels.

Read 17 tweets
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Nov 19
🧵

I and countless others are sick to death of the billionaire-funded Reform UK propaganda machine, GB “News”, and their decontextualised ‘facts’ that would make Goebbels blush.

Let’s examine the claim that “one quarter of foreign sex offenders come from just five countries”.
Yes, the raw data comes from a genuine Ministry of Justice (MoJ) prison census, but the way it’s being weaponised is deeply misleading.

The statistic sounds explosive, and deliberately so: a factoid engineered to sound like a revelation of hidden danger.
The right-wing information pipeline: a cherry-picked fragment of official data stripped of context, laundered through an opaquely funded “think tank” that isn't a think tank, amplified by billionaire-funded media, and weaponised by opportunistic politicians for electoral gain.
Read 38 tweets
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Nov 19
🧵

Reform UK’s head of Policy is a privately educated son of immigrants called Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf.

Yusuf is a shameless liar.

Below, I'll expose just a few of his more recent brazen lies and misleading claims about asylum seekers, immigrants, and ‘foreign nationals’.
In the September 2025 @SkyNews Immigration Debate, chaired by Trevor “Muslims are not like us” Phillips, Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf made a series of inaccurate and highly misleading claims about migration, and more recently, on @BBCNewsnight, about social housing. Image
These assertions are easily disproved with publicly available data, but often go largely unchallenged on air, despite being about some of the most sensitive and polarised issues in politics.

Yusuf started by claiming that UK net migration “last year” was “about a million.” Image
Read 39 tweets
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Nov 17
🧵

When a newspaper repeatedly publishes misleading, distorted, or outright inaccurate stories, the public expects independent regulators to step in.

What if I told you the editor responsible for these stories is now in charge of writing the very rules that govern press ethics? Image
Privately educated Chris Evans, editor of The Daily Telegraph since 2014, has—since January 2024—simultaneously served as Chair of the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, the body that drafts, reviews, and rewrites the ethical rulebook that the UK press is meant to follow. Image
Evans holds this regulatory role at a time when his own paper is producing more factual corrections and clarifications than almost any other major UK outlet — with an overwhelming concentration in politically weaponised right-wing themes.

telegraph.co.uk/news/0/telegra…
Read 25 tweets
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Nov 11
🧵 OPEN LETTER

Defend the @BBC Before It’s Gone

The BBC isn’t perfect — but it’s ours. As coordinated attacks on its independence intensify, I warn that if we don’t defend it now, we may lose more than a broadcaster — we may lose a cornerstone of British democracy... Image
As a long-time critic of the @BBC, let me spell it out: what we’re seeing right now isn’t organic outrage — it’s a sophisticated coordinated campaign by ideological enemies and commercial competitors to undermine the BBC’s independence and funding. Image
If you can’t see that, you’re being played — and that’s exactly the point.

Let’s start with Michael Prescott, author of the dodgy dossier leaked exclusively to The Telegraph, who is a PR man and former political editor at Murdoch’s Sunday Times.

news.sky.com/story/who-is-m…
Read 40 tweets
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Nov 10
🧵

Growing numbers of people are angry and disillusioned with the political establishment.

Desperate voters are easy prey for manipulative populists—as they were in Germany in the 1930s.

But the problem isn't immigrants or religious minorities. It's always wealth distribution. Image
The story of wealth in Britain over the past eight decades since WWII is not one of ‘the invisible hand’, but of deliberate policy choices—choices that once built one of the most equal society in modern history, but now sustain one of the most unequal in the developed world. Image
Data tracking wealth distribution from 1945 to 2025 reveal a striking U-shaped curve: a rapid reduction in wealth inequality after World War II, making Britain one of the most equal countries on earth by the mid 1970s, followed by an unbroken rise.

Read 31 tweets

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