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Feb 2 18 tweets 7 min read
#Thread

The long-awaited "levelling up" strategy is a joke: the Government are openly taking the piss out of the "red wall" voters they conned into voting for them in 2019: it contains fuck-all new money, is driven largely by meaningless targets, & aims for a 2030 completion!
It's like it was written on the back of a fag packet during a lockdown party. At the heart of the strategy is a plan to create more regional mayors which nobody wants!

We want decent jobs, affordable homes & functional public services - which have all but disappeared since 2008!
The largely meaningless targets hope to "level up" some areas by 2030! What a joke. What an insult. By November last year, the Govt had committed just £11billion through policies to support the regeneration of towns & communities across the UK for the period from 2020/1 - 2025-6.
Where 'levelling up' has worked IN REALITY rather than in fantasy eg in post-unification Germany, there have been MASSIVE fiscal transfers from rich regions to poor ones - approaching £1.5 TRILLION, or £70BILLION *PER YEAR*!

The Tories are offering peanuts, targets, & bullshit.
The Tories have "spaffed up the wall' almost as much on unusable & overpriced PPE - £10 BILLION - as they've allocated for levelling up!

£10 BILLION has now been written off by the useless Tory government, & auditors have rebuked the Dept of Health for pissing away voters' cash!
I think most people now understand that millions of voters have suffered decades of rising inequality & rising cost of living, decades of declining pay & working conditions, declining public services, a decline in decent affordable housing, & a serious decline in quality of life.
And I think most people now understand why after decades of the ALREADY rich getting MUCH richer, & after being ignored & treated with near contempt by successive Governments, millions of decent people wanted to give an arrogant, out of touch & cruel establishment a bloody nose.
I also think that almost everyone now realises that despite his unpopularity with many voters, & despite his many faults, a Corbyn-led Govt would NOT have ignored rising poverty & inequality, would NOT have stoked a divisive culture war, & would NOT have let 180,000 people die.
Levelling up is a con. The transfer of wealth is not from rich individuals or regions to poorer ones, but from poor to rich.

We've lived through the biggest scams in British history: first the bank bailouts, then the Brexit lies, & now COVID opportunism.

While the Tories have cut the spending power of councils in Britain's most deprived areas by 40% since 2010, I'm afraid this utter mess has been forty long years in the making.

👏Every.👏Single.👏Time.👏
"Everyone, including the Secretary of State (Mr Gove) thinks it's shit."
Some of the wealthiest parts of England, including areas represented by government ministers, have so far been allocated 10 TIMES MORE MONEY per capita than the poorest under Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda.

theguardian.com/inequality/202…
No fewer than eight of the “12 missions” at the heart of the government’s misleading & purely rhetorical "levelling up" strategy have been rehashed from a 2017 Industrial Strategy introduced by Theresa May, which was shelved by Boris Johnson.

independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
The National Audit Office says just 8% of the Govt’s major projects are properly evaluated, & 64% are not evaluated at all!

The Levelling up Dept 'has wasted opportunities’ to learn where spending could have biggest impact - £BILLIONS could be wasted.

civilserviceworld.com/professions/ar…
The NAO head Gareth Davies warned in a piece for The Times earlier this month that the government is “not learning from its successes or failures” because departments DO NOT FACE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES for failing to evaluate their own work.

Sounds familiar...🤔

#SueGrayReport

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More from @docrussjackson

Feb 3
How may Brexiters & @Conservatives who slag off 'Commies' know they're ideologically aligned with the Revolutionary Communist Party?

Ex-RCP:

Munira Mirza (No10)

Brendan O'Neill, Frank Furedi (Spiked)

Claire Fox, James Heartfield, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert (Brexit Party candidates) ImageImageImageImage
Munira Mirza co-authored the @Conservatives' 2019 manifesto.

In its crude repetitions & promises to “champion freedom of expression” & “unleash the country’s potential” by cutting red tape echo the RCP network’s preoccupations & polemical style.

Image
All that time Boris Johnson, Rupert Murdoch & Nigel Farage spent making out Jeremy Corbyn was a Communist, when the REAL Revolutionary Communists were hiding in plain sight - some of them, like Munira Mirza, embedded in the heart of No 10, co-authoring the 2019 Tory manifesto.🧐 ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Feb 3
#THREAD

The question of how much freedom the press should enjoy has been debated throughout US history.

In 1942 an impartial commission was formed to study mass communication, evaluate the performance of the media, & make recommendations for possible regulation of the press.
The result of the Commission on Freedom of the Press was a book: 'A Free & Responsible Press - A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines, & Books'.

Amazing that the US is having the same debate 80 years later.

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book…
The Commission began with the premise that freedom of the press is essential to political liberty; it is unique among the freedoms, for it promotes & protects all the rest.

At the same time the commission feared the concentration of media control into fewer & fewer hands.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 3
#THREAD on wedge issues.

Controversial issues are now amplified by mass media & by bots.

Populist 'wedge issues' are often a point of internal dissent within a (usually opposition) party, which that party attempts to suppress or ignore discussing because it divides "the base".
A wedge issue is a political or social issue, often of a controversial or divisive nature, which splits apart a demographic or population group.

Think Brexit, migration, trans-rights, the extent of antisemtism in Labour, the efficacy of lockdowns etc.
Wedge issues can be advertised, amplified or publicly aired in an attempt to strengthen the unity of a particular population, with the goal of enticing polarized individuals to give support to an opponent, or to withdraw their support entirely out of disillusionment.
Read 20 tweets
Feb 2
FUN FACTS about Karl McCartney (a job at GB "News" surely beckons):

In 2013, Karl apologised to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) for the content of notes he had sent to staff, described by IPSA Chief Executive as 'abusive', 'offensive' & 'condescending'.
Damaged reactionary culture war dinosaur Karl McCartney predictably opposed same-sex marriage, arguing in a 2012 reply to a constituent's letter on the matter that he felt it would next lead to "multi-partnership marriages... [and] a reduction in the age of permitted marriage". Image
Following a 2020 report into connections between colonialism & @nationaltrust properties, Karl signed a letter to The Telegraph from the "Common Sense Group" which mobilised the antisemitic conspiracy theory of 'cultural Marxism' that inspired far-right terrorist Anders Breivik. Image
Read 9 tweets
Feb 1
The many faces of Nadine Dorries...
Read 4 tweets
Jan 31
At least 464 people have had their citizenship removed by the UK Govt over the last 15 years.

Data was pieced together using FoI requests & other publications – a challenge, because the secretive Home Office does not publish this information regularly.

theconversation.com/lack-of-data-o…
Citizenship-stripping for conduct – when a person’s citizenship is removed because of their behaviour – has been a govt power for decades. Previously, citizenship could only be removed if the individual had done something “seriously prejudicial to the vital interests” of the UK.
But the power was expanded in 2006, allowing the Govt to remove citizenship if the secretary of state believes it's “conducive to the public good”!

The #NationalityAndBordersBill would allow the Govt to strip people of their British citizenship without notice!
Read 5 tweets

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