The Bachelor's Dance, OR ( A LOOONG 🧵😁 )

*The Reluctant #Socialist*. 🎵🎶🎵_🎵🎶🎵

#dischordantchord!🎶!
#dischordantchord!🎶!

"The girl that I will marry
Will have a heart so wise
That in the hollow of her eye's
My heart will want to tarry 🎵🎶🎵_ 🎵🎶🎵

🧵 "The girl who will be mine
Will have skin so soft and tender
And when it comes December
Her skin will be my wine
And me I'll love her so
And she, she will love me
And our hearts burning slow
For at least a century ... 🎵🎶🎵_🎵🎶🎵

🧵

A long 🧵 😊😊😊✊🏻👍🏻❤️

THIS is the reality, of ACTUAL VOTES, ON THE GROUND. The core Tory vote, on a reasonable day, is around 13 m.

The Labour coalition has only ever matched that once, when bad Karma and the Lib Dems decimated the Tory vote in 1997. 🧵1/11 Labour threatened that in 2017, but failed to match it, through treachery at the Southside head office, when funds, resources and support were poured into the West Midlands to shore up the right wingers.

Labour were just 2,227 votes short of an overall majority. 🧵 2/11

Right. There are THREE separate processes that take place #ONTHEGROUND in an Election, and we on the #Socialist side are as yet not too clear about what exactly the are, or what they are really for! 😊😊😊🤔

A brief thread.🧵 Firstly, there is #LEAFLETTING.

This is the simple #DISSEMINATIONOFINFORMATION: message, manifesto or major campaign issue.

Pros: simple, can be achieved by few, good coverage.

Cons: goes straight in the bin, also can annoy.

🧵

#ProportionalRepresentation - a thread: 🧵

Many so-called "progressives" openly espouse the cause of PR, having been fooled into believing that is is somehow "fairer". 😒😒😒

More on this, later. But, it is not - is is a recipe for fragmentation, and is the #Establishments best weapon against #WorkingClass #Solidarity, and should be shunned by any #Socialist , worth their salt. 🤔

Look at Israel, and Italy, to see and understand the PR end game.

🧵

Love like there's no yesterday

- by Caitlin Johnstone

Love like there's no yesterday
like you're the first to ever love
like it's fresh and for the first time
because it is fresh and for the first time
and the illusion otherwise is just a trick of human perception
🧵 Love like a hermit crab that said fuck it
and cast aside its shell forever
Love like a three year-old rides a tricycle

Love like the nukes just started flying
Love like two middle aged bloggers
making out in the rain while Australia floods
Love like cobwebs and calliopes
🧵

A long thread about the coming elections:

#LocalElections2023
#GeneralElectionWhen

@TUSCoalition
@Socialist_party
@WorkersPartyGB

🧵 We have to prepare for the Locals, and, as usual it will all be last minute, eh, @TUSCoalition ? Listen - I am not just having a pop - I know how difficult it all is. 😊

But we need to think, and plan, ahead - because ALL our cohorts will be very short of dosh.

🧵

We, who long for a better life, now need to understand what has been stolen again from us, & where we actually are.

Far, far too many people still secretly hope for the Labour Party to rise again, or even more bizarrely, for a "progressive alliance" - whatever the fuck that is. Reality needs to bite. Because the vast majority of us have done sweet fuck all in the last two years to change the terms of trade, we need to face the fact of another two terms of Tory government.

Because that is the reality, not the myth that most of us nurture.

Do you live in #Sheffield ? #sheffieldissuper !

If so, HAVE I got good news for you!!! 😊😊😊

🗳️#LocalElections2022🗳️

#TUSC #Socialism #Socialists @TUSCoalition Sheffield Hallam Co. Const.:
*Crooks and Crosspool MDW - Isabelle France

Sheffield South East Boro. Const.:
*Woodhouse MDW - Simon Jenkins
*Darnall MDW - Diane Spencer

Tonight, I'm going to assemble a risotto con funghi porcini in stile giardino con la pancetta!

There has been an argument recently about how to add the liquid?

I have a simple rule: if you have to ADD liquid, your risotto is already struggling. 😊 (1) So, a simple rule of thumb - 3 cups/ glasses of liquid per two people.

1 cup of plain almost boiling water to rehydrate the dried porcini mushrooms.

1 cup of very hot chicken stock - we always have our own chicken stock!

1 glass of Soave for the risotto ... 😉 (2)

A thank you from Colin Gardner and #WorkersPartyGB in ward GORRELL, Canterbury, and an update:

Huge thank you to everyone who has donated thus far. 75% of our goal completed in well under a week, a magnificent show of support. (1/4) This weekend gone the first batch of campaign material was received in Canterbury - 3,500 leaflets for residents and Colin and the team have been out speaking to residents and distributing this material.

Please follow: @WPB_Canterbury (2/4)

Today's THE LONG READ:

Can PR save democracy?

"In the ERS’s analysis of different PR systems, the winner in every case was the minor party ..."

By our own @davmidd

creatingsocialism.org/can-pr-save-de… via @Creatingsociali What was the really remarkable thing about the 2017 Election?

Was it Corbyn ? I suggest not - although he WAS clearly the catalyst ...

Was it Twitter ? Perhaps, although possibly not in the way that you imagine.

What was really, really remarkable, was the NUMBER OF ACTIVISTS.

FOA @ScouseSocialis2 , & anybody else: Every trade unionist, anti-cuts campaigner, community activist and all those who want to see an alternative to austerity politicians can become a TUSC candidate. But voters should know that any councillor elected under the TUSC banner will: (1) Oppose all cuts and closures to council services, jobs, pay and conditions. We reject the claim that 'some cuts' are necessary to our services or that the Covid crisis is a reason for austerity.

Will the left ever again espouse self determination, as they did in the days of Peter Shore, Michael Foot, and the great Tony Benn?

Or will they forever whine on, about how the neoliberal, neo-colonial, fascist EU needs to save them from themselves? (1/2) The answer to this question is fundamental to the prospects of there ever again being a Left Government. Because, while the middle class "left" moans about this or that problem with Brexit, the working class are being killed off by the Establishment. (2/3)

OK, listen up, please? 😊 Here follows a thread - please read all of it. (1/11)

You are all aware that I, and others, have been stewarding this:

#ScrapNHSBill

Petition: Protect the #NHS , Press Pause on the White Paper for Health and Social care:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/5810… So, we got to the 10,000 eventually, which forces a response from the Government.

The response was puerile, facile and lied as well, particularly about the so-called "consultation". 😒

So we pressed on. (2/11)

Everybody who sees themselves as being left, should be made to reflect on two simple, but intensely germane, facts about the Labour Party. 1.) But it was not to be. Council Labour Groups were strongholds of the right-wing. Out of more than 7,000 Labour councillors only 400 or so had supported Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid. (@TUSCoalition , No Cuts Peoples' Budget)

15,543 signatures. 😊 Target for today: 15,600?

@mikecoulson48 @POSH_JOCK @JujuliaGrace @EveryDoctorUK

Petition: Protect the #NHS , Press Pause on the White Paper for Health and Social care:

#ScrapNHSBill

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/5810… 😂😂😂

Our target today is 15,600!!!

HOWEVER - we have already reached that!!!

*must try harder* 15,650??? Well done, my wonderful Fweeps! 🤗👍🏻❤️

#ScrapNHSBill

Petition: Protect the #NHS , Press Pause on the White Paper for Health and Social care:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/5810…

THREAD.

The Government "response" to the petition "Protect the NHS, Press Pause on the White Paper for Health and Social care". Those of you who signed this petition - if you did not, please do now - will have received an email in response this morning. To dignify it with a full-on critique would, in my view, be a mistake.

Smashed it! 11,211 signatures on waking up!!! 😁

Today's target 11,300. 😊😊😊 @mikecoulson48

Petition: Protect the #NHS , Press Pause on the White Paper for Health and Social care:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/5810… @GNev2 @sterling7 @MarcusRashford

Nicholas Wilson (Mr Ethical) first told HSBC subsidiary HFC Bank in 2003 that charges they were adding to debts were illegal. They ignored him. He has campaigned ever since.
change.org/p/hsbc-hsbc-to… 2006 - NW reported his employers, Weightmans Solicitors, to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. They sacked him and referred to him as 'Mr Ethical'.

#MrEthical

Well, now, back to back, belly to belly, well, I don't give a damn 'cause I done dead already, back to back
Belly to belly at the zombie jamboree
Belly to belly at the zombie jamboree

#WeBackBeckett One female zombie wouldn't behave
She say she want me for a slave
In the one hand she's holding a quart of wine, in the other she's pointing that she'll be mine

#WeBackBeckett

Warning
by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/warning/ I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.