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#BigPowerOff
Some of you might be wondering about the usefulness of switching off as much as you can for one day, the 1st April.
A🧵
2. Power companies work on the principle that they are able to predict in advance how much energy the nation will use on a given day - even at a given time (ad break during the World Cup, anyone?)
3. By having days of action (I say "days" in the plural quite deliberately, we can screw with their economic model.
4. Making 1st April the first day of action - well, we all have to start somewhere, don't we?
5. "Why not just refuse to pay your bills?" people cry. Well, because disable people/people on benefits/low paid are already struggling to keep the minimum possible to support themselves, their families and, in some cases, their medical equipment working to survive.
6. "Why not protest on the streets?"
Well, two reasons. a) not everyone is physically able to protest, or can afford to take time away from just damn well struggling to survive to do so and b) the govt. are hammering traditional forms of protest, so we have to get smart.
7. They can lock you up for protesting, they can cut you off for not paying. They can literally do nothing if you just stop consuming. So all of us who can must switch off as much as we can on 1st April to start the ball rolling. That's not to say there can't be local protests.
8. In fact, local protests, in your own neighbourhood, with a small placard explaining what you are doing and why, are likely to be far more effective, and gain far more support locally from your own neighbours than a national, centralised protest that will be ignored.
9. So join the #BigPowerOff on 1st April.
Switch it off.
Use the hashtag
Post short clips of your action.
Start that ball rolling.
Make the energy companies understand that we will mess with them til they stop messing with us.
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Let us, please, use the second part of this documentary as our own blue-print. We cannot allow Netanyahu and his administration to escape justice in the way Rajapaksa and his government have escaped.
37m25s into the second video (link below), one David Miliband of this parish:
"There was a propaganda battle clearly taking place in which it was very important for the Rajapaksa government to insist on the "whiter than white" nature of its own approach in order to get through this final phase, final weeks, ultimately final days of the war".
Miliband, in a released document, called the Sri Lankan government "liars". Is there no statesman prepared to stand up and call the Israeli government liars? Is there no statesman with sufficient gravitas and stature on the world stage to prevent this sickening repeat of history, where governments commit war crimes in plain sight and walk away with complete impunity? channel4.com/programmes/sri…
Was pondering earlier that, in many respects, those who suffered the ordeal by fire during the Corbyn years, being daubed as antisemites when they weren't, have actually had an enormous impact. 1/
2/ I distinctly remember the first time I was called an antisemite. It was on here, of course, and led to fear and soul-searching and self-reflection and apology at various levels over different periods.
3/ but gradually, as it all unravelled people began to see what was going on. And now nobody gives a monkeys if, in the face of standing up for peace and justice and equity, bad actors call us nasty names. Because lives are more important. Peace is more important.
As someone who spent a stint studying Third World Development, before switching to Law (then, subsequently did an MA in Reconciliation and Peacebuilding [brazen appeal to authority. Shut up!] what I see happening in the UK now is a Structural Adjustment Policy 1/
2/ SAP's were the way in which countries from the developed North intervened in the less-developed South: "We will provide funding if you roll back on public services, education, etc., focus on restructuring to the benefit of big business through transport infrastructure" etc.
3/ Thing is, vampire capitalists ran out of poor countries they could exploit. So then they started on the poorer of the rich EU nations - who remembers the PIGS? Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain in the last global recession, and how they were bled dry by oligarchs?
Buddhist thread for the day:
When my libel case really kicked off in Nov 2019, I took myself up to my Buddhist centre and chanted for 4 hours straight to find a way through. I had spent the summer in a state of high anxiety as I knew failure would bankrupt me. 1/
2/ While I was chanting I suddenly remembered this Gosho ("writing worthy of respect") from Nichiren Daishonin nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Conte…
3/ Shijo Kingo, the addressee of the Gosho, was a Shogun warrior who had been told by his Lord that if he remained a disciple of Nichiren he would lose his lands. Nichiren warned him that his life would be in danger, and losing his lands was a comparatively small price to pay.
So anyway, there was this woman who came from a nice middle-class background but found herself in difficult circumstances. She still had her nice middle-class family to support her, and the - then - excellent social security safety net. 1/
2/ She was a single mum, having separated after an apparently abusive relationship with the father of her child. Fair do's. Given the safety-net, she spent her days sat in a cafe in Scotland writing. The stuff she wrote was good, actually.
3/ In fact, it was so good that she got a book deal with Bloomsbury and it touched a zeitgeist and she made a shedload of money. Good for her, all things considered.
Who remembers The Man In The White Suit - Martin Bell? He stood as an anti-corruption independent and took Neil Hamilton's seat off the Tories in 1997. 🧵
2. Of course, being high-profile due to his journalist background, he was able to get a lot of media attention. But there is nothing to stop any of us standing, either as an independent or for one of the #PAL parties, on an anti-austerity, anti-corruption platform locally.
3. People rattle on about FPTP and "helping the Tories" if you don't vote Labour. But Labour is, frankly, little better than the Tories now. Barely a ciggie-paper between them on lots of key policies. So how would a Lab MP be any better for you, your family and your community?