I was struck by this sentence, written by Andrew Neil, calling for penalties for the unvaccinated:
"I'm not impressed by those who claim this is an egregious assault on our freedoms. Liberty is not the same as unbridled licence to do what you want, which is the road to anarchy."
Functional democracies have to find the right balance between on one hand, maximum freedom for individuals, & on the other, sensible measures to protect decent people from those who would cheat, lie, exploit, manipulate or use violence or intimidation to satisfy their desires.
Over recent decades, the Right has lurched toward 'free-market libertarianism', of the kind that reduces the influence of the state on economic matters, yet increases the repressive power of the state by abandoning rules, rights & regulations designed to protect citizens.
This lurch toward unbridled free-market capitalism, pushed by almost every grotesquely wealthy media baron, corporate CEO, right-wing Government & free-market think tank on earth brought us the catastrophic financial crash & is pushing the earth toward cataclysmic climate change.
As we can see in Britain, the Govt's cynical libertarian attitude, exploitation of good faith, & utter contempt for rules, regulations, human rights, codes of conduct & even truth itself, is resulting in division, anger, frustration & the breakdown of trust in democracy itself.
Imho, the Govt's cynical, exploitative & dangerously irresponsible lurch toward right-wing libertarian populism - of the kind broadly supported by Andrew Neil - is the REAL "egregious assault on our freedoms. Liberty is not the same as unbridled licence to do what you want".
"Freedom".
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If divisive, hateful, unelected far-right extremist GB "News" presenter Nigel Farage appears on this week's @bbcquestiontime (36th time this century), it will be the final nail in the coffin of the @BBC's credibility as an "impartial" "public service" broadcaster.
#bbcqt
Like all sensible people, I want the @BBC to STOP platforming a highly disproportionate amount of unelected partisan billionaire-funded right-wing propagandists, & instead platform more of our tens of thousands of actual experts. 🇬🇧
My open letter to the @BBC now has well over a quarter of a million reads in over 144 countries. @BBCPolitics is controlled by extremists, who disproportionately platform billionaire-employed propagandists from #TuftonSt & the right-wing news media.
#bbcqt
Recent changes in election spending limits, combined with weakened checks & balances, means that more than ever, money is subverting British democracy.
Right-wing parties like Reform UK & the @Conservatives already have the support of the billionaire-owned 'news' media.
Unlike virtually all the billionaire-owned UK newspapers (including the i, Metro, Mail, Times, Sun, & Telegraph) and the billionaire-owned broadcast 'news' media (GB "News" TalkTV/Radio), @BylineTimes has at least tried to inform voters of these changes.
More money will be spent on #GE2024 than on any other election in UK history. The concentration of news media ownership in the hands of a handful of selfish billionaires, combined with the grotesque amount of money donated to the two main parties, undermines democracy.
#Leveson2
Graham King, an Essex businessman who has accumulated a £750 million fortune, partly through taxpayer-funded government contracts, has entered the Sunday Times Filthy Rich List.
Associate Prof, Melanie Griffiths, explains why this is a problem.
King’s business empire includes Clearsprings Ready Homes, which has provided asylum accommodation to the Home Office since 2000, & currently receives £3.5M/day for asylum housing & transportation, even though it's often accused of providing substandard & unsafe accommodation.
The Guardian reported in 2019 that hundreds of asylum seekers were crammed into Clearsprings accommodation which was overrun by cockroaches, rats and mice.
Lawyers described the sites as “depraved” and likely unfit for human habitation.
The day after GB "News" was found to have AGAIN broken @Ofcom broadcast rules, they platform nativist extremist Leo Sherlock, founder of an influential website known for spreading false, misleading or absurd claims about COVID-19, immigration, Muslims & other topics.
Leo Sherlock is little-known here, but his website 'The Liberal IE', which spreads all manner of awful divisive misleading hateful garbage, has over 575K Facebook followers, as well as around 40K subscribers and followers on @X, @YouTube and @instagram .
'Ethnonationalism' - often used interchangeably with 'nativism' - is an extremist ideology strongly associated with the far-right & fascism, which promotes a form of nationalism whereby the nation and nationality are solely determined by ethnicity.
Why doesn't Emma Watson offer a balanced view of Zero Hour contracts?
Because she's a free-market fundamentalist - a Common Sense Society Director, co-founder of Save Our Statues, also of the neoliberal Henry Jackson Society & #TuftonSt's CIVITAS & New Culture Forum...
The main argument in support of Zero Hour contracts is flexibility: if you're asked to work & it's not worth your while, you could turn it down. But employers don’t have to offer you future shifts, & if you turn down work, you may find you’re offered fewer opportunities or none.
While some companies *might* reward hard-working zero-hour contract workers with permanent or fixed contracts, many employers imply this in order to make you work hard & exploit you, and won't offer you a decent contract.
There are many disadvantages of zero-hour contracts...
There have been attacks on the @nationaltrust since at least 2017. Since 2020, The Spectator has published at least 25.
In 2020, a former Bullingdon Clubber asked "When will the Trust get it into its thick skull that it’s supposed to look after buildings & landscapes?"
Four days later, the Eton-educated trustee of the climate-sceptic GWPF, former Chair of the right-wing Policy Exchange, & former editor of The Daily & Sunday Telegraph & The Spectator, Charles Moore, followed up with this infantile attack on the "woke" NT: desmog.com/charles-moore/
On 9th November 2020, a letter in The Telegraph, signed by 28 Tory (Common Sense Group) MPs accused the NT of being "coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the 'woke agenda'". 'Cultural Marxism is the antisemitic conspiracy theory that inspired Anders Breivik.