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Jan 26 17 tweets 8 min read
#THREAD

The #PREVENT Review was announced in 2019. Like the controversial Race Report, the Social Mobility Commission, & so much else, it's an ideological stitch up, headed by ex-director of the hard-right anti-Muslim Henry Jackson Society, William Shawcross.

And now this:
A draft of the "independent" #PREVENT review, led by William Shawcross, made the dangerously irresponsible claim that 'The Govt’s counter-terrorism programme has been too focused on right-wing extremism & should now crack down on Islamist extremism'.

Image
In 1992, Old Etonian William Shawcross wrote an "admiring" biography of Rupert Murdoch, & in 2011 was appointed a member of the board of directors of the grotesque trans-Atlantic UK-based neoliberal/free-market 'think tank', the Henry Jackson Society.

In 2003, Shawcross published 'Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe & the War in Iraq', a defence of the war that praised Tony Blair's 'consistent courage' in pushing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as the 'right thing to do'.

There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. Image
By 2010, Shawcross had become a critic of New Labour & a fan of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory: 'Labour boasts that 3 million new jobs have been created, but most went to immigrants.. leaked Labour documents suggest this was a deliberate policy "to dilute Britishness".' Image
Using dangerously divisive extremist rhetoric reminiscent of the far-right, Shawcross continued by saying that 'Labour's bullying "multicultural" ideology has been a catastrophe' & concluded by claiming only the @Conservatives could rescue us from such humiliations!
When the @Conservatives entered government the following month, Shawcross' daughter, Eleanor Shawcross acquired a key liaison role between the Treasury & the City of London. Later she donated £20K to Sunak's leadership campaign, & is now head of Rishi Sunak's No10’s policy unit. Image
Several years earlier, in an opinion piece for The Jerusalem Post, Shawcross had claimed that the West is 'threatened by a vast fifth column - that there are thousands of European-born people, in Britain... who wish to destroy us, & whom he referred to as Islamo-fascists.
The Cabinet Office announced on 29 August 2012 that Shawcross was the government's controversial & preferred candidate for chair of the Charity Commission, a post he held until 2018.

Then in September 2021, Shawcross became the Government's commissioner for public appointments. Image
Shawcross led an investigation into the process that saw Boris Johnson's friend Martin Thomas appointed as chair of the Charity Commission, who withdrew from his appointment after allegations he had behaved inappropriately while running Women for Women International. Image
Questioned by MPs about his investigation, Shawcross said the government is “not to blame” for the failed attempt to appoint Thomas.

He later apologised for the statement, after being accused of prejudicing his own ongoing inquiry into how the appointment was conducted! Image
And now we find William Shawcross - the father of Rishi Sunak's policy chief - has just been appointed to investigate Boris Johnson’s “loan” link with Rishi Sunak's old boss (who "gave" the @Conservatives £400,000) Richard Sharp, the man Boris Johnson appointed to Chair the @BBC! Image
George Osborne attended Ellie's 25th birthday party, & increasingly far-right shit-stirrer Douglas Murray is an old friend.

While working as a management consultant, she was seconded to work for Boris Johnson during his 2008 mayoral election campaign.

Later in 2008, Ellie Shawcross was appointed as an advisor to then Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.

Shawcross married Brextremist Simon Wolfson in June 2012, who she met while he was working on Conservative economic policies with George Osborne. Image
Brextremist Simon Wolfson - Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise - is currently chief executive of the clothing retailer Next plc, as well as a Conservative life peer who donated to David Cameron's Tory leadership campaign in the 2005. Image
Wolfson was named by the billionaire-owned Telegraph as the 37th-most important Tory in 2007, & signed an open letter calling on then Chancellor, George Osborne, to press ahead with the coalition government's #austerity plan to reduce the public finance deficit in one term! Image
In December 2016, Wolfson was appointed to the Chair of the #TuftonStreet's Eurosceptic Open Europe think-tank, which was widely accused of stoking anti-EU sentiment in the UK media, & which later merged with the dodgy Policy Exchange.

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More from @docrussjackson

Jan 27
Tory donors who have collectively given the party more than £21MILLION since 2001 have been declared as the ultimate owners of UK properties held through more than 150 offshore companies.

The #ToryShitShow never stops.

theguardian.com/politics/2023/… Image
The @BBC chair & Sunak’s old boss Richard Sharp, more than 20 other Tory donors, & a string of billionaires are among those who have declared they own UK property through offshore jurisdictions - presumably for the sole purpose of avoiding paying UK tax.

theguardian.com/business/2023/… Image
Sharp "has been thinking about how to provide for his children on his death. This arrangement isn’t about a personal tax benefit to him as he pays more UK tax under this arrangement, but about him planning for provision for his children."

So is it about avoiding inheritance tax? Image
Read 4 tweets
Jan 27
#THREAD

A survey commissioned in 2019 revealed the shocking result that over half of British people did not know that at least six millions Jews had been murdered during the #Holocaust.

#HolocaustMemorialDay #LightTheDarkness

theconversation.com/teaching-the-h…
The #Holocaust, as a topic, has been part of the national curriculum in England & Wales since its creation in 1991. The 2014 iteration of the national curriculum has the Holocaust as a firm part of key stage 3 history – compulsory for all 11 to 14-year-olds in state schools.
However, research into what school pupils in England know about the #Holocaust shows that - like swathes of the adult population who are subject to highly partisan & divisive newspapers - they lack knowledge about its context.
Read 6 tweets
Jan 26
The UK is facing a “terrifying” “crisis point” in abortion provision, experts say, with rising demand & restricted access to care in many areas putting unprecedented pressure on struggling #NHS services.

Many anti-abortion Tories will be delighted.

theguardian.com/society/2023/j…
Read 5 tweets
Jan 26
Every word has a variety of senses & connotations, which shift over time. The word '#woke' is a good current example.

The Right are attempting to make the word 'woke' a pejorative, while others embrace the term, in the sense of its original meaning: 'awake to social injustice'.
Language is a communicative activity, highly dependent on context, whether that of the ongoing discourse or of social & ideological changes. Work on semantic change has focused, not on results of change, but on enabling factors for change.

oxfordre.com/linguistics/di…
Attention has been paid to the contributions of cognitive processes, such as analogical thinking, production of cues as to how a message is to be interpreted, and perception or interpretation of meaning, especially in grammaticalization.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 26
#THREAD

While inflation & changes in the power of unions have played a part, a steady increase in personal debt is strongly associated with a steep decline in strikes, strike participation, & days lost to strikes in the vast majority of OECD economies.

theconversation.com/strikes-how-ri…
The current wave of strikes is the largest in more than a decade, but it's nowhere near the heights reached in the UK during the 1970s. September 1979 saw more than 11 million working days lost due to strike action. The latest figures for November 2022 show 467,000 days lost.
A rapid increase in personal debt has been a major factor suppressing industrial action over the last four decades. The decline of social housing & deregulation of the financial system in most OECD countries has encouraged workers to borrow heavily. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
Read 10 tweets
Jan 25
I find this fascinating - the decline in the share of total net personal wealth held by the UK's top 10% & 1% since the turn of last century, was halted & then reversed under Margaret Thatcher.

In 2023, the UK's richest 1% are now wealthier than 70% of the population combined.
Source: 'The UK’s wealth distribution and characteristics of high-wealth households' (2021) (page 34).warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econom…
Read 4 tweets

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