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Lewis Goodall Profile picture
@lewis_goodall
Mar 5, 2022 • 17 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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Lots of small, hopeful stories of solidarity from the border. Ran into a group of German paramedics from Frankfurt. They’ve travelled 11 hours in their ambulance bus to help, a vehicle they’ve had for 30 years. At the end of the day they’re handing over the bus to the Ukrainians.
They’re not even sure what’s happening to it or where it’s going: “i just know they need it far more than we do”, the paramedics’ team leader tells me.
This is their weekend, they’re back at work in Frankfurt at 6am Monday morning.
Not before they’ve spent today providing medical care to anyone who needs it at one of the crossings, especially the kids. They’ve brought a bus load of jackets, baby formula, medicines and other provisions.
The German paramedic team are providing medical care first but also giving out chocolate and a teddy bear each for the kids.
The German ambulancebus is now taking a coachload of women and children to the nearest town.
Some faces from the bus.

This is Nasia, Gelb and Ira. They’ve been travelling for two days. Gelb (the boy in the middle) is by all accounts a cracking little Traditional Ukrainian folk dancer. They’ve saw shelling at Kharkiv. They’ve no idea when they’ll see their Dad again.
Another family on the bus-this time three generations. Irina, Alina and little Lev. He’s only three weeks old.

They told us their journey to the border was hell; it was freezing, there was fighting en route. Hard enough for adults, imagine it with a newborn.
He struggled at first as the journey began but has battled through it and is doing well, all things considered. His name means “lion”, which clearly couldn’t be more appropriate.
This lady has one foot. The journey, as you can imagine, has been difficult. She also desperately needed insulin as she’d run out, en route. It was provided by the ambulance bus.
We arrive at our destination. Everyone on the bus has to carry on their journeys.

Wherever the big crossing points are there’s more generosity on display. Offerings of transport as far as Scandinavia. People offering free packs of socks. Free sweets and hot dogs for kids.
But there’s also that other theme which permeates everything here, alongside the generosity: the exhaustion. This little boy was so tired that even though he was being trundled along the pavement by his Mum on top of a suitcase, he barely moved a muscle.
It’s the little moments which strike you. On the bus one of the grandmothers was helping with the baby. She then sat down. She closed her eyes and started breathing through her mouth. She was trying to centre herself. You could see the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Lots responding that stories like the German paramedics restore their faith in humanity. I know what you mean and the wider generosity here is something to behold. What is unsettling about it though is that it’s only necessary because of the evil which brought everyone here.
Ie they coexist with each other, one flows from the other. It’s both comforting and dispiriting at the same time.

Enough for one day- to those asking, will let you know how little Lev gets on. We have his family’s contact details.
Oh and btw the German ambulancebus was handed over to the Ukrainians at the border late this evening. It’s off to be of use to the 🇺🇦 injured as you read this.
Some people asking what the bus was used for in Germany- domestic emergencies, mainly but among other things had been used at Frankfurt Christmas market every year for decades.

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More from @lewis_goodall

Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Aug 29
Polling from @Moreincommon_ on Lucy Connolly

More than half think her sentence was too lenient or about right. Only a third that it was too harsh.

Only 18% think politicians should associate themselves her, while 51% think they should actively distance themselves from her.
Turns out the preoccupations of the online right don’t mirror the way population thinks at large- who knew!
Conservative voters are more than twice as likely to say politicians should create distance between themselves and Connolly (48 per cent), than associate themselves with her (22 per cent).
Read 4 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Aug 21
Globally, we're moving back towards an aristocracy of wealth, more akin to the 19th century than the 20th.

Anyone who cares about social justice, about moving away from higher and higher levels of taxation on work, should be very concerned. Time to do something about it.
Some uncomfortable facts

-The top 10% of UK households hold 57% of all wealth, while the bottom 50% own less than 5%.

-The top 1% alone controls 23% of wealth

-Inheritances are soaring: projected to double from £100bn a year (2020) to £200bn by 2040

-Half of all wealth in the UK is now inherited rather than earned, up from about 25% in the 1970s.

-Children of the wealthiest 20% are seven times more likely to remain in the top 20% as adults than children from the poorest fifth

Meanwhile working people are paying higher and higher taxes on their labour. We need to shift towards taxation on inherited wealth and a reduction in taxes on work and consumption. Both for moral and economic reasons. Let's allow people to keep more on what they do NOT what they inherit.
Lots of people accusing me of being communist. No- it's a liberal argument. On this I'll defer to John Stuart Mill, who wrote this in 1848 and would be dismissed as a "commie wanker" today:

"The principle of inheritance… is chiefly grounded on the duty of parents to provide for their children. But that duty has certain limits; and when these are exceeded, the right ceases. Beyond a certain point, to permit the transmission of enormous fortunes is nothing less than to establish a monopoly of wealth, and is wholly opposed to the spirit of a free and equal society.”

I'm being intentionally provocative when I propose a 100% rate. But I certainly think the rate should be much higher than it is today. It has been before in British history (go back to the 1920s) and in other societies- see Japan, S Korea.
Read 4 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Nov 6, 2024
For those waking up in US, bewildered in Europe, what happened?

Have been on air for last 12 hours pouring over the data

Here it is

There's no silver lining for Democrats. Trump won everywhere. He's going to win the popular vote. He did better across the demographics. He grew his coalition, better with black voters, Latinos, young voters. The US become less racially divided by party. Harris underperformed Biden virtually everywhere.

Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,367 counties. His margin decreased in only 240 counties.
Trump didn't just sweep up in the swing states, and none of them are going to be that close. He closed the gap on Harris in a tonne of blue states. She turned out anaemic victories in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Minnesota. He expanded his margins in red states to take huge generationally big victories in Florida and Iowa. He flipped Miami Dade county, winning a heavily Latino county Hillary won by 30 points by 10. He drove down Harris margins in big urban centres everywhere, including Chicago, New York, Austin etc.
This feels a far more devastating loss for the Democrats, even than 2016.

2016 the Dems had plenty of things to console them. A massive popular vote victory. A narrow electoral college loss in a few places. A rock solid ethnic minority coalition which looked like a solid electoral map of the future. Roe was intact. The Supreme Court was still balanced.

They have none of that now. They're staring down the barrel of a transformed Republican Party and a sustained inability to know how to deal with Trump and Magaism. In policy terms, they also have nowhere to go. In Biden's term they governed exactly in line with their own instincts. It's been soundly rejected by the electorate.
Read 8 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Oct 23, 2024
Extraordinary intervention from Donald Trump’s own former Chief of Staff John Kelly. The fmr general says Trump meets the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator and has no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/…
Kelly says: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly says Trump would not want to be pictured with amputee veterans saying that “it wouldn’t look good for me.”

Kelly confirms Trump spoke positively of Hitler as president.

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”
Read 8 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Aug 27, 2024
Thoughts on Starmer speech

Self-evidently highly political. Little in the way of policy, instead a framing of politics to come.

But there’s a paradox to it all
As predicted, Labour are trying to suggest things are worse than they knew. There’s a bit of truth to that though broad contours of state of economy/public realm were known.

We’re clearly in for more pain. Just like, checks notes, the past 14 years.
That itself is an idictment of a generation of policymakers and politics. Voters might be forgiven for thinking they’ve heard all this before. Indeed they have, since George Osborne in 2010. Ernie Bevin said he wanted to be at the Ministry of Labour til 1990, ie to set the terms of thinking on industrial relations for a half century. It sometimes feels like Osborne will be Chancellor til 2050, no matter bow many times his vision of politics/political economy fails. You have to wonder how much more tolerance for it there’s going to be.

If nothing else, politically it was a huge contrast with the politics of optimism at last week’s DNC- instead now we have things are going to get worse before they get better.

Strongest sections of the speech were his diagnosis of the problems of populism and how Tories fell into that reap. Was authentically him and convincing.
Read 8 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Jul 16, 2024
The story of the last time a former president was shot and lived to tell the tale🧵

In October 1912 President Teddy Roosevelt was running for an unprecedented third term in office. He'd left the presidency four years before. On the 12th he was campaigning in Milwaukee. Image
Roosevelt had left the Republicans to found the Progressive Party, also known as the 'Bull Moose' Party.

On the night of the 12th October he was dining at the Gilpatrick Hotel, owned by a supporter. After eating he left to give a speech at the Milwaukee auditorium.

En route he was approached by a man called John Schrank, a German-American tavern owner, originally from Bavaria.Image
Shcrank opened fire on the former president with a Colt revolver. He was quickly wrestled to the ground but not before a bullet penetrated Roosevelt's body.

Fortunately, the bullet hit something else first- TR's glasses case and the folded up copy of his speech, some 50 pages long entitled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual"- both of which in his coat pocket.
Read 6 tweets

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