Unlike Andrew Neil, I haven't got the luxury of being Chairman of an establishment magazine which represents its billionaire-owner's interests.
Nonetheless, we need to talk about Andrew Neil's climate change stance & history of working for overseas-based billionaires.
Here's Andrew Neil in 2013, asking: "Is the whole global warming schtick over?"
Global warming is, as kids know, the long-term heating of Earth’s climate due to human activity, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
And here's a testy & revealing exchange following Neil's bizarre question, between journalist Andrew Neil & climate expert Bob Ward, who has served as policy & communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment at the LSE since 2008.
Here's Numpty Neil repeatedly embarrassing himself in 2014 & 2015, making the oh-so-funny banal joke that every moronic pub bore makes: 'It's snowing - so much for that global warming nonsense!' Ho ho ho.
Some of the highly selective 'evidence' Neil cited in 2013/14, including from well known climate sceptic John Christy, is used to imply global warming is a myth.
In 2019 Christy gave a presentation to the #TuftonSt-based climate science denial group, Global Warming Policy Forum.
In September 2020, lured by Dubai-based billionaire's & multimillionaire's money, Neil announced his exit from the BBC to become chairman of the toxic ideologically extreme shit-show known as GB News.
I'm sure he felt much more relaxed about writing tweets like this:
Within the first week, presenters on the Dubai-based investment firm funded GB News had already interviewed two commentators associated with the UK’s main climate science denial group, #TuftonStreet's Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
In his high profile interview with Rishi Sunak, Andrew Neil repeatedly asked the then Chancellor about the “eye-watering” costs of meeting the UK’s net-zero target. In a sign of things to come, Neil must have 'forgotten' to mention or ask about the costs of not reaching net-zero.
GB News is of course funded by Dubai-based investment firm Legatum, founded by billionaire Christopher Chandler, who in 2002, along with his brother, were the fourth largest investors in Russian state-controlled gas company Gazprom.
This 2020 exchange with that equally popular TV presenter, Philip Schofield, showcases all reactionaries' formulaic rhetorical manoeuvre.
Having spent decades mocking climate science, Neil feigns surprise when asked if he's a climate change denier - it was "bizarre" he says. 🧐
In the follow-up tweet he does what every single conspiracy theorist & ideological extremist does - he plays the victim, & falsely accuses the 'MSM' of 'closing down debate', when these fuckers puke out their unhinged toxic bullshit ALL DAY EVERY DAY ON MULTIPLE MSM PLATFORMS.
Neil was once the proud face of GB "News", but after leaving he describes its Dubai-based funders as a “quite ideological” “Ukip tribute band”. No shit. 10 of GB News’s 31 hosts made on-air statements in 2022 rejecting/challenging the scientific consensus. theguardian.com/media/2023/may…
Shortly after “quite ideological” Andrew Neil left GB "News", he said journalists are “basically the PR department of Greenpeace” when it comes to reporting on the climate crisis, & accused the likes of #ExtinctionRebellion of “nonsense scaremongering”.
In October 2021, a month after announcing he wouldn't be returning to “quite ideological” GB News, Neil was tweeting another “quite ideological” right-wing media platform, Guido Fawkes, who just happened to characterise @SkyNews's climate reporting as "DOOMSDAY" reporting.
Last year, rather than celebrating the mixed but welcome news that *some* parts of the Great Barrier Reef had the highest amount of coral cover since monitoring began 36 years ago, the #Spectator predictably attacked the "climate doomsters".
Anyway, draw your own conclusions about a man who lives in France, who has worked closely with authoritarian regimes, & has spent much of his life mocking climate science & climate activists while representing the interests of foreign/non-dom billionaires.
#Spiked has always debated the scientific consensus on global warming. In 2013, Rob Lyons of Claire Fox’s Academy of Ideas, told Spiked’s readers that the climate crisis was ‘a myth’ because, there ‘is 50% more ice in the Arctic than last year’.
Years later, like Andrew Neil, Spiked tacitly admitted climate change may be a problem, amending its stance from denial to downplaying outcomes. It recently published an article celebrating the benefits of global warming, while advocating use of more fossil fuels, shale gas coal.
Scratch the surface & there's just a relatively small number of well-connected people, who work for a network of linked & influential organisations, & who spend their lives pumping out toxic shit into people's minds in exchange for billionaires' money.
🧵 Online #Incel communities foster misogyny, resentment & extremism, which have led to multiple murderous attacks in the US & UK, motivated by hatred toward women.
Their echo chambers also amplify mental health issues like isolation & anger, radicalizing vulnerable men & boys.
In the US, proven murders attributable to incels include: Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 & injured 14 in a shooting & stabbing spree; Lyndon McLeod shot & killed 5; & Mauricio Garcia shot & killed 8 & injured 7.
In the UK, Jake Davison shot & killed 5, including a 3-year-old girl.
Farage defended his Reform UK MP who was jailed for repeatedly kicking his girlfriend (which wasn't disclosed to voters before he was elected), & in 2014, he dismissed as "just a joke" an MEP's comment that beating women "helps bring wives back to Earth."
A 🧵 about how spurious and inflammatory claims, based on unevidenced cherry-picked data, are passed off as truth by partisan private limited companies and used as a weapon to divide voters and to scapegoat and demonise migrants.
At 1.32pm on Monday 10th March, The Telegraph published the claim that based on “the first data analysis of its kind. Data from the Ministry of Justice, obtained under freedom of information laws,” shows that “Foreigners [are] convicted of nearly a quarter of sex crimes.”
Chris Philp, shadow home secretary, said the figures were “shocking.”
Shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, said: “Not only is mass migration making us poorer, but this data proves it’s also making us dramatically less safe.”
Democracy is under attack. As with the US, Italy is 1 of 5 European Govts undermining the rule of law ‘in nearly all aspects’, with changes to the judiciary & a “heavy intolerance to media criticism”, fueling Europe’s deepening “democratic recession”.
A report by Civil Liberties Union for Europe said Italy was one of five “dismantlers” – with Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania & Slovakia – that “intentionally undermine the rule of law in nearly all aspects”.
The report highlights judicial systems subject to political manipulation, weak law enforcement against corruption, overuse of fast-track legislative procedures, harassment of journalists & growing restrictions on peaceful protests.
Many of Britain's most vocal 'anti-establishment' voices attended some of the most expensive schools on earth.
These broken boys masquerade as 'anti-elite' while serving the interests of the ultrarich by turning working class people against each other using 'Divide & Rule'.
Moscow born Konstantin Vadimovich Kisin came to the UK aged 11 & was sent to Clifton College boarding school (current fees: up to £18,360/term).
He recently said about Rishi Sunak "He’s a brown Hindu; how is he English?" He's a regular speaker at Paul Marshall's ARC conference.
Rupert James Graham Lowe was sent to Radley College, an all-boys independent boarding school (current fees: up to £19,200/term).
Lowe worked in the City of London for companies such as Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings Bank.
My own summary is above, but journalist @gilduran76 - of the brilliant #FrameLab - has now written his own summary, review and interpretation of it, which I reproduce with a few links and commentary, below.
To fully understand Silicon Valley’s project to destroy democracy, read 'The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State.'
In 1999, it was rebranded as 'The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.'
Life was demonstrably worse in the 1979 than it is today.
Zymunt Bauman calls this yearning for an imagined past, ‘retrotopia’, in which the ‘Volk’ (the ‘simple folk’, who Reform UK claim to represent) are constructed as homogenous, Christian, white, & ‘indigenous’.
Life was demonstrably inferior in the 1970s compared to today for almost everyone in England.
Life expectancy in the UK in 1980 was 71 for men and 77 for women. By 2019, life expectancy at birth in England had increased to 79 years for men & 83.5 for women.
1. Economic Hardship
In 1979, the UK economy was struggling with high inflation, unemployment, and a budget deficit. This eroded purchasing power, making essentials like food, clothing, and housing more expensive relative to wages. "Stagflation" was a significant problem.