GET A GRIP Profile picture
Sep 24 11 tweets 7 min read
#THREAD

The cranks at US libertarian billionaire-funded #Spiked have sent an email asking for money to help fund their divisive propaganda: "It’s a difficult time out there financially for many people... Over the next few weeks, we’re doing a donation drive!"
#CostOfGreedCrisis
#Spiked are divisive & dangerous, ideologically extreme, #propagandists.

A joint investigation between @DeSmog & The @guardian revealed that #Spiked US Inc. received funding from the Charles Koch Foundation between 2016 & 2018 to the tune of $300,000.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
#Spiked is just one of the myriad #propaganda wings of the dangerous free-market growth ideology having profoundly harmful impacts on individuals, communities, societies, countries & democracies across the world, as well leading to environmental degradation & the #ClimateCrisis.
The magazine was founded in 2001 by members of Living Marxism, the 1990s media arm of the Revolutionary Communist Party that was forced to cease publication after losing a libel action brought by the production company ITN.

desmog.com/spiked/
The ideology of the Revolutionary Communist gang eg Claire Fox & Munira Mirza, have increasingly aligned with that of the Libertarian/free-market fundamentalist/Brextremist/far-right, & became embedded in the heart of Downing St under Boris Johnson.

The divisive, polemical & "anti-woke" Spiked were very active in campaigning to leave the EU (a key aim of the Koch ideology was to isolate the UK) & a number of their contributing writers were candidates for The Brexit Party at the 2019 general election.

bylinetimes.com/2019/05/13/ast…
TV & radio regular & spiked crank Claire Fox was recently on #bbcqt arguing FOR fracking, despite any supporting evidence.

The "free-thinkers" at #Spiked promote endless anti-environmental & climate science denial stories - which just happen to coincide with the Koch ideology.
For decades, Charles Koch's objective, & the objective of the global network of extremely influential free-market "think tanks" (lobbying organisations - in the UK based at Tufton Street eg IEA) - has been to "destroy the prevalent statist paradigm."

The Koch ideology is basically low tax & looser worker, financial, product, & environmental regulation, to enhance corporate power & interests.

It is an ideology that has driven US & UK economic policy for forty years, but has had 'a perception problem'.

The awful news is that this profoundly misguided, cruel & harmful ideology, which led to the global financial crash, a decade of austerity, grotesque inequality & profound environmental degradation, has reached its apotheosis here, in the Liz Truss Govt.

And if you want to better understand the personal & political "values" of divisive, provocative contrarian culture war crank Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked from 2007 to September 2021, & currently its "chief political (propaganda) writer" here you go:

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More from @docrussjackson

Sep 25
#THREAD

The British Social Attitudes Survey is Britain's longest running annual statistical survey, conducted by the highly respected National Centre for Social Research since 1983.

New results show Britain has become MORE liberal, but more divided too.

bsa.natcen.ac.uk
The most pressing issue is of course the #CostOfLivingCrises that threatens a severe drop in living standards, especially for the less well off, compounded by the announcements in what has been dubbed the #KamiKwasi "mini-budget', set to dramatically increase inequality. ImageImage
Other issues facing Britain include our underfunded #NHS still recovering from the pandemic; the integrity of the Union is under threat; significant regional disparities in economic & social wellbeing; & deep political division over a Brexit - part of a polarising ‘culture war’.
Read 77 tweets
Sep 25
So Starmer has ruled out including any support for Proportional Representation in @UKLabour’s election manifesto - despite the Tories being in power for more than two-thirds of the last century without EVER winning a majority share of the popular vote. 🧐

theguardian.com/politics/2022/…
Fun fact:

Just 29% of the UK electorate voted Tory in 2019, yet under FPTP, this was enough votes to secure an 80-seat majority.

Another fun fact:

Votes/seat #GE2019:

Tory 38K
Labour 50K
LibDems 336K
Greens 886K

Read 4 tweets
Sep 24
Imho, if @UKLabour, the @theSNP, @TheGreenParty & the @LibDems don't have a coordinated push on something similar in Britain, they are simply cowards, significantly contributing to the destruction of everything good & decent about Britain. 🇬🇧
We all know what the front pages would say had @UKLabour delivered a catastrophic mini-budget announcing more than £400 billion of extra borrowing & £45billion in tax-cuts, which sent the pound crashing to its lowest level against the dollar in 37 years.
Take this big fat 2017 LIE on the front page of the Mail, claiming the @UKLabour manifesto would "cost EVERY family £4,000". Four months later, on page two, they said: “We are happy to clarify that, as the article stated, the £4,000 was an average figure.”
pressgazette.co.uk/four-months-on…
Read 7 tweets
Sep 23
Hedge-funders & disaster capitalists will crack open the champagne & make a killing from our reckless ideologically extremist Govt, as the pound plummets & investors take fright at the prospect of a surge in govt borrowing to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
theguardian.com/business/2022/…
#KamiKwasi Kwarteng's insane tax giveaway, the biggest since 1972 , “risks a confidence crisis in sterling”, & the market reaction demonstrates “a broader loss of investor confidence in the government’s approach”, reflecting the damage to Britain’s standing in global markets. 🇬🇧
“[It’s] really hard to overstate the degree to which the Kwarteng budget has just wrecked the gilt market.”

Illustrating the scale of the turmoil, five-year gilt yields had moved by the most in a single day since 1993, surpassing the Covid pandemic, the 2008 crash, & 9/11.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 22
#THREAD

120,000 claimants won't be being "ASKED" to take more work, they will be be "FORCED" to.

And if for whatever good reason they decline to take extra work in low paid insecure shit jobs, miles from home & family, they will likely end up ill, homeless, in prison, or dead.
Welfare reforms have contributed to mental health decline in the UK over the last two decades.

Between 2013 & 2018, an additional 60,000+ unemployed people experienced levels of psychological distress that are clinically significant due to the introduction of Universal Credit.
The introduction of Universal Credit led to a significant increase in psychological distress. These cruel & brutal & unethical new changes to government welfare are evaluated purely on a fiscal basis, ignoring the negative effects on health & wellbeing.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Read 20 tweets

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