Since their inception in 1834, the Tory Party has used a tried & tested formula to win votes.
Unless & until politicians take responsibility for exposing & confronting this con-trick, & offer people a positive alternative, we'll be stuck with the cruel & corrupt Tories.
The Tory strategy:
Form an alliance with the very rich, & represent their interests.
Keep house prices artificially inflated by not building enough homes.
Give press barons, corporate lobbyists, & free-market think tanks untrammelled access to, & influence over, Government.
Promise lower taxes by defunding, cutting, privatising, or outsourcing the essential public services needed for a decent society.
Sell off publicly owned assets, often built up over centuries, to private interests, transferring public wealth to their rich funders & supporters.
Divide & rule by using populist nationalist rhetoric & by demonising & scapegoating groups unlikely to support them: poor, vulnerable, & disabled people; young people; certain minorities; public sector workers; activists; union members; academics; migrants/foreigners; & the Left.
Forty years of unhindered, globalised, deregulatory free-market capitalism, which has seen an unprecedented transfer of power & unimaginable wealth, from poor to rich.
It may already be too late to halt & then reverse it.
Here's another #THREAD showing what a hateful, cruel, ignorant & barbaric little country Britain has become, which compares how successive British Govts have gone about crime & justice, with an emphasis on prison & rehabilitation, in contrast with Norway.
Echoing objections to social-media fuelled violence from the government of the UK & others, the Chamber of Progress, a tech business advocacy group, is urging delusional adolescent billionaire Musk to take his leadership role at @X more seriously - or resign if he cannot do so.
Since July 29 when right-wing influencers made false claims on Twitter/@X & other social media platforms that falsely blamed the murder of three children on Muslims & asylum-seeking immigrants, dozens of far-right #FarageRiots erupted around the nation.
The #FarageRiots started with a lie – a fake name and false information that suggested the teenager alleged to have killed three young girls in #Southport was a Muslim asylum seeker. He was neither.
There is an uncomfortable hypocrisy at the heart of this story, which is that people didn’t react the same way when, earlier this year, a white man killed a 14-year-old black boy, Daniel Anjorin, with a sword.
While that perpetrator was treated as a horrific anomaly, the Southport attacker was viewed by racist rioters as representative of migrants & Muslims, despite being neither.
A psychologist explains the cognitive biases and psychological responses behind this disparate treatment.
Researchers have developed & articulated the concept of “everyday extremism” to acknowledge that extreme narratives derived from non-mainstream sources can become a part of mainstream political discourse via social media.
As usual, @elonmusk takes a half-truth, removes important context, then selectively presents a misleading claim implying something about contemporary society, in this case mobilising a 'white victimhood' racist dog whistle narrative to fuel anger, division, & engagement.
Musk presents the claim that the etymological origins of the word word slave derives solely from the exploitation of 'white people', rather than, say, emphasising how religious texts from Judaism, Islam & Christianity all recognise slaves as a separate class of people in society.
Before examining Musk's misleading claim, it's worth knowing that the word 'Slav' refers to a member of the most numerous ethnic & linguistic body of peoples in Europe, residing chiefly in eastern & southeastern Europe but extending also across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean.
#NEW opinion poll: "73% of the British public say that the riots are shaming rather than standing up for Britain, & the public overwhelmingly believe that those helping clear up after the riots (87%) represent British values." - @Moreincommon_ 🇬🇧
Rather than attitudes to the riots sitting in two contrasting pro- & anti-riots camps, public opinion is akin to Russian Dolls: small groups are willing to condone the riots but much bigger groups with opinions cited as motivation for the violence condemn it without hesitation.
The smallest group are those who express support for the unrest: 7% of the public say they are ashamed Britain is a multi-ethnic country; 8% think violent demonstrations outside asylum seeker accommodation are acceptable; & the 11% who have a positive opinion of Tommy Robinson.