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May 29, 2023 20 tweets 9 min read Read on X
#THREAD

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. Image
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. Image
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. Image
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. ImageImage
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. Image
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: Image
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).

desmog.com/2021/06/21/ana…
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. Image
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.

What are the chances?

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. 🧐 Image
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. Image
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”.

theguardian.com/media/2021/nov…
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. Image
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". ImageImage
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.
And of course, the article Andrew Neil refers to at the top of the thread is by Koch-funded Spiked's Chief Crank & shit-stirrer, Brendan O'Neil.

A truly lovely chap. 😬

ImageImage
#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. Image
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.

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More from @docrussjackson

Feb 17
#THREAD

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’. Image
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. Image
Read 40 tweets
Feb 11
#THREAD

'Anti-elite man of the people' Nigel Farage, educated at one of the most expensive private schools on earth, is now the highest paid MP in the UK. His basic annual MP salary is £91,346 plus expenses.

The UK National Living Wage for people aged 21+ is just £12.21/hour. Image
Let's take a look at some of Nigel Farage's additional earnings that he's legally obliged to declare in the MPs Register of interests - and which contains a few surprises - starting with GB "News".

Full details publicly accessible here:

members.parliament.uk/member/5091/re…New York, USA. 15th Dec, 2024. NIGEL FARAGE chats with far-right shit-stirrer and former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News London, RAHEEM KASSAM (who describes London as a "shithole" as The New York Young Republican Club held their annual Gala event at Cipriani's on Wall Street. (Credit Image: © Laura Brett/ZUMA Press)
Between 16th July 2024 and 15th January 2025, Farage decalred earnings of £264,790 for his work as a presenter on Reform UK Ltd's 24/7 propaganda channel, GB "News", co-owned by Islamophobic billionaire hedge-funder, Paul Marshall.

Hourly rate: £2,243/hr

Image
Read 35 tweets
Jan 30
#THREAD

Late on 22nd January, The @Telegraph claimed on its front page that “One in 12 in London is an illegal migrant.”

Millions of people were shocked and outraged.

This 🧵 is about our broken news media, the subversion of truth and democracy, and the amplification of hate. Image
PART ONE: WHAT THE PAPERS SAY

The front-page article, published in the Daily Telegraph, claiming “London is home to as many as 585,000 illegal migrants, equivalent to one in 12 of the city’s population” was covered across the media and widely discussed by politicians and others. Image
The claim that “One in 12 in London is illegal immigrant” is based on this report, commissioned by Thames Water, conducted by the research company Edge Analytics in February 2023, which the Telegraph says it obtained “under freedom of information-style laws for the environment”. Image
Read 25 tweets
Jan 24
#THREAD

What does the English Defence League (EDL) have in common with Reform UK?

And what do the EDL and Reform UK have in common with Islamist extremists?

Quite a lot actually...

Image
The EDL is an Islamophobic protest movement aimed at preserving UK identity and culture in the face of a perceived Islamization of the UK and Europe.

So is Reform UK. Image
The EDL reinforce the notion of the “nationalist subject” - a fallacious conception of citizenship - that wrongly assumes members of the majoritarian culture are possessed of certain core values, beliefs, and traits that embody the true essence of the nation.

So do Reform UK. Image
Read 33 tweets
Jan 21
🧵 Quite a few politically & historically illiterate brainwashed Trump-supporters replied or quote-tweeted the tweet below to tell me lifelong democratic socialist George Orwell was not in fact a democratic socialist. Truly Orwellian. So I asked Oligarch Musk's Grok about it...
1. Why was George Orwell a lifelong democratic socialist?

Grok: Image
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Read 25 tweets
Jan 21
#THREAD

In the preface to her newly reissued book, 'Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan - 30th Anniversary Edition', historian @NancyMacLean5 reflects on the resurgence of white power nationalism and political violence in contemporary America. Image
MaClean is known for her prescient best-selling 2017 book about the post–WWII conservative thinkers and policymakers who shaped the hyper-neoliberal #Project2025, 'Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America',

Evidence of why her prize-winning book has aged well and why @OxUniPress decided to republish it is obvious: numerous instructors continue to assign it, countless historians cite it, and the best Klan scholars have given it well-deserved praise.

global.oup.com/academic/produ…
Read 65 tweets

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