Stephen Barlow Profile picture
Aug 17 25 tweets 6 min read Read on X
"How can England possibly be running out of water?"

This crisis, this emergency, connected to the climate and ecological crisis, is primarily a crisis of leadership. Our modern politicians/governments, are totally unfit to lead/govern.

1/🧵theguardian.com/news/ng-intera…
Our fake leaders, because they are not real leaders, but corporate and oligarch shills, are fixated on only one thing, economic growth, which primarily benefits the very rich, at the cost of the longer term viability of our societies/civilization. They don't care about that.
2/
All this has been very foreseeable. In 2013, former Environment Minister, Richard Benyon wrote about it, and said in 2012, when he was minister, just before the 2012 Olympics, that we were weeks from a national water shortage emergency.

3/theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
In other words, 13 years ago, the then Environment Minister, realized that there was a critical lack of water infrastructure, in the UK, and 13 years later, both the Conservative and now Labour governments did nothing about it, and are trying to ignore it.
4/
Our fake leadership, is totally ignoring the very real climate and ecological emergency, along with this critical water shortage, to recklessly pursue economic growth, to the exclusion of all else, because the richest people on Earth, demand they do this.
5/
Keir Starmer's AI vision, and the pursuit of corporate AI around the world, is threatening to create even greater demands of water, which our system cannot provide. This AI obsession, is purely about the very rich making more money for themselves.

6/bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
This is why I call it fake leadership. These people are billionaire and corporate stooges, purely representing billionaire and corporate interests, and recklessly ignoring the public interest, and public safety, for profit and super wealth.
7/
These fake politicians, are using sophistry, serious dishonesty, to sell this to the public, giving the false and misleading impression, that greater economic growth, benefits ordinary people, through trickledown, but the raw figures demonstrate this is a lie.
8/
This almost manic pursuit of economic growth, through neoliberal economics, has created massive skyrocketing wealth for the super rich, whereas this is not happening for ordinary people who are struggling, with costs of living crises.

9/oxfam.org.uk/media/press-re…
It became clear quite a long time ago, that the rationale for the all out pursuit of economic growth, to create trickledown for ordinary people, is a monstrous lie. It's just created vast increasing wealth for the richest, and austerity for the rest.

10/
This wealth accumulation of the super rich, has totally corrupted our societies, because as their wealth has rapidly expanded, so has their hold over our politics and the media, who are basically propagandists, not reporters of news.
11/
When I searched for a reference, to demonstrate that economic primarily benefits the rich, I just found page after page, of basically propaganda from think tanks and foundations, funded by the super rich, expounding the importance of economic growth, to benefit all.
12/
As I say, with the raw figures, it is easy to prove that the all out pursuit of economic growth, has just created ballooning and skyrocketing wealth for billionaires and austerity for every one else, because that is what is objectively happening.

13/equalitytrust.org.uk/evidence-base/…
However, trying to find a reference, which properly documents how the all out pursuit of economic growth, after 45 years of neoliberalism, is almost impossible, because of all the false propaganda, that economic growth benefits everyone.

14/threadreaderapp.com/thread/1947958…
This is clearly a lie, because we have had decades of skyrocketing rich, for billionaires, and over 15 years of austerity, and rising costs of living, for everyone else. The fact, that so few are spelling this out, illustrates how our system has been corrupted.
15/
As I say, the lie of economic growth benefiting everyone through trickledown, is clearly a lie, as this policy has created massively growing wealth for the richest, and falling living standards for everyone else. Yet, governments are still pushing the trickledown lie.
16/
It's very clear, why our senior politicians and parties, are selling the lie, that economic growth benefits everyone through trickledown, because the truth, that economic growth primarily benefits billionaires, would be hard to sell to the public, at election time.
17/
But getting back to my original point. The all out pursuit of economic growth, at the cost of everything else, has created an out of control climate and ecological emergency, threatening to collapse our civilization.

18/theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
The growing water crisis, not in the UK, but globally, is an effect of the ecological crisis, where various cash cows like fracking, AI etc, create even more demand for water, threatening our drinking water supplies, because profit for the richest, is all that matters.
19/
The reasons for the increasing dishonesty of our politicians, representing billionaires and big corporations, and that of the media, is because "vote for me, I will make you poor and collapse our civilization", is not an effective way of getting elected.
20/
Vote for mass global starvation, is not a catchy election strategy, so bare-faced lying in politics, and gaslighting by the oligarch/corporate media, has become the norm.

21/threadreaderapp.com/thread/1949771…
Remember, out of control climate change, biodiversity loss, and threatened critical water shortages, is all down to corrupt politics and a corrupt media, representing billionaires and big corporations, not the public interest.

22/theguardian.com/world/2023/sep…
What I am doing here, is pointing to the raw facts and data, about the future viability of our societies, as these existential threats to our societies are being ignored, by our corrupt leadership, in the pockets of billionaires and big corruptations (a deliberate error).
23/
Our lives, futures and future generations, are being sold, simply so the billionaires, can become trillionaires.

Why do we put up with it? Because we are being lied to and gaslighted.

24/bigissue.com/news/social-ju…
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More from @SteB777

Aug 13
Can I make something clear about this thread. I was primarily talking about people in positions of great power, who are never held to account, or examined closely.

I gave an example of 2 mundane fraudsters, simply to illustrate that such people exist. It wasn't about them.
1/🧵
The problem we have, is that it has almost never happened, where a senior political fraudster, has been totally unmasked, in the manner of these 2 common fraudsters I used to illustrate, how totally disingenuous people, do exist.
2/
Let me give an example. Donald Trump, trying to get Barack Obama, Joe Biden and the Clintons prosecuted. If Trump was honest, and he is certainly not, he'd want to make dishonesty and lying in public office, seriously illegal.
3/
Read 26 tweets
Aug 13
We need to have a discussion about disingenuous people, in positions of power, and disingenuity, in general.

Understanding this, is central to understanding why the world is in such a mess, and why we have such bad leadership.
1/🧵
If you look up the term disingenuous in a dictionary, you find things like insincere, not frank or honest. This is far too mild for what I'm talking about, but there isn't really any other widely understood English term, that covers it.

2/vocabulary.com/dictionary/dis…
I'm talking about total disingenuity, where the whole of how someone presents themselves, is completely false, and most of what they say, is dishonest and misleading, because really they're only interested in their own ambitions, and the ends justify the means.
3/
Read 27 tweets
Aug 10
This is the direct, suppression of free speech, with the police acting as an oppressive state arm, to silence what people are saying, to stop government embarrassment.

The only legitimate reason to arrest a protestor, is if they are threatening harm or violence, to others.
1/🧵
This has always been the role of the police, to prevent, protest turning into violent disorder, where the safety of others is threatened.

So if someone is threatening to, or encouraging others to set fire to an asylum seeker's hostel, and this is a credible threat, intervene.
2/
This is because in the example I have described above, these protestors were actually trying to set fire to buildings where asylum seekers lived, and were trying to physically intimidate them, or physically assault them. It was an actual threat, not just a perceived threat.
3/
Read 25 tweets
Aug 7
Recently, I created a thread about how and why the world is in a complete and utter mess.

Essentially, modern politics, has just become the puppets of powerful and wealthy oligarchs, and corporations, dancing around on string, to their tune.

1/🧵threadreaderapp.com/thread/1951559…
Even if you totally forget about the climate and ecological emergency, social justice, the interests of ordinary people, fairness and corruption. Modern politicians are making a complete pig's ear of running our societies.
2/
Let's just look at things through the very narrow lens of what these politicians claim to want to achieve, economic growth. They are quite clearly failing very badly, just on their very narrow set of objectives.
3/
Read 13 tweets
Aug 4
"The head of Google’s DeepMind says artificial intelligence could usher in an era of ‘incredible productivity’ and ‘radical abundance’."

This is dangerously delusional. How did someone so stupid, get such a position?

1/🧵theguardian.com/technology/202…
Let's get this clear, being stupid i.e. extremely unwise, is nothing to do with IQ and cleverness. Lots of very clever people, were also monumentally stupid.

You can be stupid, and clever.

2/
This is virtually all the interview says about the climate crisis.

"future AI datacentres are predicted to require is astronomical, especially when the world is facing drought and a climate crisis."

It's not just a climate crisis, its a biodiversity and ecological crisis.
3/
Read 17 tweets
Aug 4
I want to briefly explain this phenomenon, I've seen develop in the last 15 years, certainly within the last 20 years, because I never saw it before then, and I have been walking in the countryside for over 55 years.
1/🧵
Those doing this, seem to have got the idea from commercial music festivals, which I am sure most have been to. Where supermarkets sell cheap tents etc, in the festival season, and where the tradition has developed, where you just leave the tent.
2/
I have encountered groups doing this, talked to them, so it is not pure guesswork. I think it is based on simple economics. None of the people who do this have any interest in camping, so they have no use for this after.
3/
Read 16 tweets

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