“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, writing from a prison cell in 1963
With thanks to @snowshadow@mastodon.social.
“… and when quizzed about the upcoming nurses strikes, the Conservative party chairman said that demands for a 19% pay rise for nurses would cost the NHS 10 billion pounds, which should instead be spent on NHS frontline services. Back to you, Chris.
Gaslighting fuckers! If nurses aren’t the NHS frontline?? I mean, what about ambulance drivers and and paramedics? Are they not frontline services? Give them a decent pay rise, you fuckers! They deserve it, find the money! You all spring into action every time you crash the economy, you can find the money then. Get ’round the table, make a decent offer. Instead, they’re sending in the army telling us the unions are holding the country to ransom. The unions!? Can we all just be clear about this? Our last prime minister blew a 30 billion pound hole in the economy overnight, test and trace cost us 37 billion pounds. Useless PPE wasted 8.7 billion pounds, which ended up in the pockets of Tory donors. A shambolically executed Brexit lost us 40 billion in tax revenue alone. Richi Sunak lost 11 billion pounds by overpaying interest on UK debt, and yet, you read the front pages, it’s nurses who were the ones who are greedy and irresponsible. It’s the fire service that’s holding the country to ransom, ’cause they all just decided they’d prefer to drink tea on a freezing picket line than save children from burning buildings. It wasn’t so long ago we were clapping them; hailing them as heroes. They were all considered key workers during the pandemic, weren’t they? Bus drivers, teachers, nurses. Now, they’re called lazy workshy fuckers. Postal workers, striking to save what’s left of the Royal Mail — it having been sold off to the lowest bidder for a quick buck by the millionaires in Westminster — but it’s your postman who is destroying the country!? The entire northern rail network is on the brink of collapse whilst rail companies and their shareholders make record profits, …but it’s that fat, lazy fucker behind the ticket desk, asking for a bit of job security, who is destroying our rail infrastructure!? 25 to 50% of average households are unable to pay their bills this winter, whilst energy companies announced record breaking profits. In 2021, Shell paid zero pounds on their oil production in the UK and received 100 million pounds of subsidies in tax payer’s money. Working people are suffering at the hands of corporate greed and unbridled economic mismanagement, and this is why people are striking for better pay, conditions and job security. Recently, the government gave us the Public Order bill that, that [sic] even one Tory peer described as an afront to a civilised society. Crackdowns on peaceful protest is the purview of China and Iran, not British democracy. And yet these reactionary fuckwits tell us it’s Scottish primary school teachers who are holding us hostage. The bastards who wrecked the economy, squandered our reputation on the international stage, sold off any and all of the country’s assets for a quick buck are getting their mates in the media to tell you that it’s bus drivers, bin men, teachers, nurses, postmen, passport control workers and rail workers who are throwing the country to the dogs. Don’t believe them; they are lying to you!
Well, stome [sic], still some weeks ahead of Christmas industrial action, misery for commuters, patients and holiday makers. Frustration and anger at the unions for deciding to strike over Christmas …”
![BOOMERANG: Empire and Britain's economy [FULL FILM] ft. John Barnes | openDemocracy](https://edafe.de/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FkmOK4tNc31A%2F0.jpg)
“The Boomerang is hitting Britain hard, especially right now. Empire wasn’t just something that happened to the Colonies, it’s something that happened to Britain. It created some of Britain’s most well-loved institutions, from the NHS to its greatest talents. But it also created the unequal Britain we see today.”
Kojo Koram
How legacies of empire are breaking Britain’s economy: Q&A with Owen Jones, Kojo Koram and Dalia Gebrial
“For a party that prides itself on the economy, the Tories have a shocking record of running it. Our economy has the slowest growth in the G7. We have got greater regional inequality than almost any other developed nation. Food banks now do the job of Government in providing for families—families that are more often than not in work.
Government could start solving this crisis by providing solutions, like closing tax-avoidance loopholes or creating a windfall tax for energy companies. But instead, we get endless bills paying lip service to a manufactured culture war. The priority isn’t the economy. It seems to be things like protecting freedom of speech, and yet the Tories are the ones who banned schools in England from using sources that are not overtly pro-capitalist. They are cracking down on freedom of assembly and protest. They are privatising Channel 4, when the Culture Secretary didn’t even know that Channel 4 receives no public money, so the argument is not financial. And as the Member for Rhondda touched upon earlier on, when we consider, that the Culture Secretary was a key focus of a Channel 4 documentary once about the influence that Christian fundamentalism has on UK politics, it becomes even more concerning that this decision is political and it’s personal. It is not professional.
But most terrifying of all, however, is that the Government literally wants to get rid of the Human Rights Act. And that begs the question: for whom do they think rights have gone too far? Do you know how scary it is to sit at home and wonder if it is you—is it your rights that are up for grabs? We have witnessed Windrush. Our economic strategy is to open our doors to the rest of the world when we need their hard work and then chuck them out 50 years later without a word’s notice. We tell our own citizens that their safety cannot be guaranteed in Rwanda, but we are perfectly happy to ship asylum seekers, people fleeing war and persecution, over to Rwanda as though they are cattle to be dealt with by someone else and despite knowing that this plan costs more than it will ever save.
This is just little England elites drunk on the memory of a British empire that no longer exists. We have the lowest pensions in Europe and the lowest sick pay. We pretend minimum wage is a living wage when it is not. We miss our own economic targets time and time again. We are happy to break international law. We are turning into a country where words hold no value.
And over the last 12 years, I fear we have been sleepwalking closer and closer to the F word. And I know everyone is scared to say it for fear of sounding over the top or being accused of going too far, but I say this with all sincerity. When I say the F word, I am talking about fascism—fascism wrapped in red, white and blue. And you may mock and you may disagree, but fascism does not come in with intentional evil plans or the introduction of leather jackboots. It doesn’t happen like that. It happens subtly. It happens when we see the Governments making decisions based on self-preservation, based on cronyism, based on anything that will keep them in power, we see the concentration of power whilst avoiding any of the scrutiny or responsibility that comes with that power. It arrives under the guise of respectability and pride, that will then be refused to anyone who is deemed different. It arrives through the othering of people, the normalisation of human cruelty. Now I don’t know how far down that road we are. Time will tell, but the things we do in the name of economic growth—the warning signs are there for everyone else to see, whether they admit it or not.”
Mhairi Black
“This is one of the main contradictions of our time. The confrontation between democracies and autocracies is overplayed, forgetting that Western countries share with Russia and China an unbridled hyper-capitalist ideology and a legal, fiscal and political system that is increasingly favourable to large fortunes. In Europe and the United States, everything is done to distinguish useful and deserving Western entrepreneurs from harmful and parasitic Russian, Chinese, Indian or African oligarchs. But the truth is that they have much in common.” Thomas Piketty explains why effective sanctions against Russian oligarchs would require the establishment of a truly global financial registry.
“The game is no longer about sending you a mail order catalogue or even about targeting online advertising. The game is selling access to the real-time flow of your daily life—your reality—in order to directly influence and modify your behavior for profit.” According to Shoshana Zuboff, we need to revoke the collective agreement with practices that result in dispossession of behavior.
“Too much of our political debate just insults people’s intelligence and just suggests that every facet of Brexit you don’t like is purely a feature of only the Prime Minister’s version of it, rather than intrinsic to leaving.” Sir Ivan Rogers advocates the need for serious substance to replace plausible bullshit.
“And those who promise that leaving the EU will deliver ‘control’ are really promising something quite specific: a social and cultural reboot. As well as being morally contemptible, of course, this is also a complete impossibility.” Matthew d’Ancona does away with the pretence surrounding Brexit and wants those responsible to take ownership of what is to come.