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Feb 9 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
It's not green policies that make our homes so expensive to heat - quite the opposite it fact.
It's the power of dirty money, and the governments that champion it.
My column.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
I wonder how many people are aware of just what a rip-off UK policies are. The government is GIVING our assets to fossil fuel companies.
But that's not all. It then grants them a massive "rebate" on the tax they haven't paid.
ie free public money.
We should be taxing fossil fuel extraction out of existence. Instead the government is subsidising some of the richest corporations on Earth, with our money.
So how do Tory MPs justify this policy? By bringing out the violins. They disguise their concern for the ultra-rich as concern for the poor.
For example, at almost every opportunity @SteveBakerHW has voted against measures that would help the poor.
But as soon as the profits of fossil fuel companies are threatened by green policies, the Sheriff of Nottingham metamorphoses into Robin Hood.
In the pages of The Sun, proprietor R Murdoch, lifelong champion of the poor.
He rails in this article against "The elite policymakers who govern our lives".
Without any apparent awareness that he might be one of them.
Of course he cares about the costs being born by "hard working families". Doh! That's why he so noisily campaigned for Brexit, which ...
Oh
Er
Whoops
Look, over there, a spider!

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 9
You cannot understand the politics of this country until you grasp the Pollution Paradox:
The most antisocial commercial interests have the greatest incentive to buy political favour, otherwise they would be regulated out of existence. So politics comes to be dominated by them.
What this means is that nothing can really change without a radical reform of political funding (campaign finance). Here (next tweet) is my idea of what it should look like.
Every party would be allowed to charge the same, modest fee for membership (perhaps £50). It would then receive matching funding from the state, as a multiple of its membership receipts.
*There would be no other permissible sources of income*.
Read 4 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 7
The major component of the cost of living crisis is, as it has been for years, the cost of accommodation. The outrageous price of housing is caused by
a. the sale of council houses
b. failure to build new *social* housing
c. the deregulation of rent
d. second homes ...
Thread/
e. empty homes
f. control of land banks by property developers
g. massive and growing inequality in the distribution of purchasing power
h. which fuels a buy-to-let and second home frenzy
i. “Help to Buy” schemes that do the opposite of what they claim to do, by inflating prices
j. as does mortgage credit liberalisation
Read 8 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 7
Our country is now held together with goodwill and sticky tape. As successive Conservative governments have ripped up society with austerity, privatisation, Brexit and disaster capitalism, we survive because
frontline workers and volunteers go way beyond the call of duty.
This week's @PrivateEyeNews provides further evidence of the UK's slide towards total regulatory collapse. The Financial Conduct Authority is so beholden to the government's deregulatory agenda that it's now licensing obvious money-laundering outfits as "fit and proper".
That's what gets me about all this: it's the wilful demolition of a functioning society, enabling spivs, chancers and conmen to take over. It's the same with the destruction of environmental standards, building standards, food standards, employment standards etc.
Read 10 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 7
The Environment Agency's vandalism of the River Tone in Somerset in the name of "flood control" directly contravenes its own advice. But its advice, in a presentation called "River Dredging and Flood Defence", published in 2013, was deleted and censored by the government.
Thread/
I found a copy, and reproduced it here (see the Scribd link halfway down the article). theguardian.com/commentisfree/…. The EA was instructed to ignore the science and take an ideological approach set by the government. It continues to do so to this day.
The minister in charge at the time was Owen Paterson, the worst Environment Secretary we've ever had (and that's saying something). He was reported as saying “the purpose of waterways is to get rid of water”.
Never mind that he is now disgraced. His unscientific views prevail.
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 4
Rishi Sunak has presided over some of this government's cruellest decisions. Don't let them persuade you that he's the saviour who will rescue us from this mess.
It reminds me of how Gordon Brown, having financed the Iraq War and ripped public services apart through his Private Finance Initiative, was presented as the saintly alternative to Tony Blair.
And still is ....
Alongside all the other horrors, never forget how Sunak shovelled money into the pockets of second home owners, rewarding rich people for extreme selfishness, while exacerbating the housing crisis.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 3
Why is there a cost of living crisis in one of the richest nations on Earth?
Because of extreme inequality.
Regardless of a few feeble sops, the Tories are making it worse.
Last night, they gave bankers a tax cut worth £1bn a year.
While raising NIC for ordinary workers.
We urgently need a radical redistribution of wealth in the UK. By means of:
Higher top rates of income tax.
A lifetime gift tax.
A progressive property tax.
Windfall taxes on energy firms.
Meaningful carbon taxes.
Major taxes on second homes and holiday lets.
These taxes have two functions:
1. To break the spiral of patrimonial wealth accumulation, which is as deadly to democracy as it is to equality.
2. To raise revenue that can be spent on a Green New Deal, the NHS, much better schools and other essential measures.
Read 5 tweets

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