I finally have my hands on a copy of FRACTURED CHINA. A beautiful object, thanks to Bruno Capolongo's lovely image and great design by
@CambridgeUP
. Here's a thread what's inside my latest book with
@ShaharHameiri
! 1/13
I have put in about 60-70hrs over the past week handling the COVID19 crisis in my department. Today
@QMUL
demanded to know what dates I was on strike in March so they could dock my next pay packet. In the middle of a pandemic. Utterly ashamed to work at this university.
Top scientists:
- everyone will get COVID, spread can't be stopped, incl. by vaccine
- mass testing should end
- focus on people who actually get ill, not "cases"
- we must learn to live with it
Exactly what "sceptics" have been saying for some time.
The speed with which lockdown fanatics have gone from tarring and feathering Dominic Cummings to endorsing mass gatherings is breathtaking. I don't think they have any conscious understanding of their own motivations.
Proud of my son for attending the
#BlackLivesMatter
protest which he found profoundly inspiring.
He told me he maintained social distancing as best he could in the large crowd. Not easy given many others weren't, but I'm glad he tried.
Christine Lagarde, one of the chief torturers of the Greek people - who admitted to Varoufakis that inflicting austerity wouldn't work, but did it anyway - is set to be ECB president. How can anyone believe the EU is capable of change? It's not even capable of basic decency.
In my London borough this week, three kids were stabbed and seven arrested in a knife brawl, and the mayor is tweeting about his consumption of soft drinks.
Drinking just one 330ml can of fizzy drink a day could add over a stone of weight gain per year. I’m cutting out fizzy drinks for
#FizzFreeFeb
to highlight the impacts of sugar on obesity and tooth decay. Join me and
#GoFizzFree
:
@tom_watson
Attempts to smear The Brexit Party as "far right" and the "gotcha" focus on Farage's record are simply not going to dent the party's support, because what drives it is a singular concern for democracy, not agreement with Farage's personal views.
I oppose vaccine passports because they are
- ineffective (vaccinated people still spread COVID-19)
- discriminatory (against those who do not want/ cannot have the vaccine) and
- authoritarian (no to a "papers, please" society)
#together
MPs are exceedingly reluctant to listen to 17.4m citizens, but they creepily sit, rapt with attention when a 16 year old Swedish schoolgirl tells them what to do. Why? Because they agree with what she's saying, and it doesn't challenge their power and control.
No, it empowers *parliament* to define workers' rights, environmental standards and consumer protections. Get elected and YOU decide them, not Johnson. Or do you think you can't win elections? In which case, by what right should you determine the laws governing this society?
Having reviewed what has been agreed, it is clear that the Johnson deal is a far worse deal than Theresa May’s deal. It paves the way for a decade of deregulation. It gives Johnson licence to slash workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer protections. 3/
The Euro has "brought prosperity" to a small set of German industrial interests and some French and German banks. For practically everyone else, it's mostly been an unmitigated disaster. The scale of the delusion-denial here is staggering.
Happy Birthday to the
#Euro
, which turns 20 years old! Europe's single currency has broken down barriers & brought prosperity. Now we must reform our institutions and make sure it delivers for all.
#EUROat20
I'm quite shocked by how few people in my feed are mentioning the
#ParisBeheading
. Someone literally cut a teacher's head off for showing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Truly appalling.
French anti-terror prosecutors now investigating the deadly assault which happened on the outskirts of Paris at around 5 pm local time near a school in Conflans Saint-Honorine, a western suburb of the French capital.
Emily Maitlis just can't seem to believe the chief rabbi's answers here. "What, you actually think we should be democratic EVEN IF it reduces GDP?!" Exposes a deeply unattractive, authoritarian streak.
The official line on lockdown is slowly, achingly, changing, to recognise the very many harms caused. But this was pointed out by many of us, like
@UsforThemUK
, right from the start. Belated recognition today smacks of people covering their tracks.
So Macron can now set 15 day deadlines for the UK to do x or y? How does "taking back control" feel? And if he's bluffing now, you think December 2020 when we fall off a cliff, will be filled with amitié?
So apparently after lockdown we will be encouraged to walk or cycle to "protect the public transport system".
That's where "protect the NHS" gets you: the notion that we exist to serve public services rather than vice-versa.
Blair is probably more responsible than any other individual for Labour's loss of the working class. From 1997-2015, Labour lost nearly 4m voters while the total population grew by 7m.
Let's be clear. Johnson was mocking Blair for his colonialist attitude towards developing countries, rushing there to receive adulation whenever he had domestic problems. He was being rude about Blair, not black people. Context actually DOES matter.
For Boris Johnson to say his use of “picaninnies with watermelon smiles” was “wrenched out of context” is to imply there’s a context in which racist slurs are ok. There isn’t. You can tell a lot about someone by their choice of language. His words are vile
The only people surprised at the EU's behaviour over the vaccine and Northern Ireland are those who despise Britain so much that they developed a fantasy of the EU as its opposite: a paragon of humanitarianism, decency and good sense -- despite all evidence to the contrary.
I don't think anyone will be fooled by this faux outrage from the political class. You don't get to ignore and scorn the electorate and then face zero consequences. Reap the whirlwind you have sown!
In these fractious times, it’s vital that politicians use language that’s responsible, measured and doesn’t inflame discord or hatred. Farage isn’t stupid, he knew exactly what he was saying today and how his words would be heard. If he cares about his country, he’ll apologise..
No Nightingale hospital has treated a single COVID-19 patient. They are being closed down after costing £532m. This is the price of continued poor healthcare management.
Wrong. Working-class people, through sheer dogged determination, have forced the political elite to do what no other electorate has managed: honour a referendum that went against the EU. They are being listened to more today than for the last three decades.
I grew up near Pontefract and in other working-class Yorkshire communities. To see a packed working men's club cheering Farage and Widdecombe just fills me with despair at how badly Labour has let down these communities.
I cannot think of an MP who has done more in the last two years to stop us leaving the EU than
@YvetteCooperMP
. That’s why The Brexit Party is campaigning in her constituency today.
.
@paulembery
is receiving a staggering amount of abuse for daring to write a book that left-liberals dislike. Unlike these idiots, I have actually read it. There is nothing remotely "fascist" about it at all - it is simply an "Old Labour" take on the current left.
UK universities should never have become so reliant on overseas student fees that they can be weaponised by another state as a form of economic sanction.
Still enraged by this hrs later. I've seen colleagues on precarious/ hourly paid contracts work flat out to support students. Others struggling to manage teaching online with childcare. Everyone desperately trying to do their best for students - and management does this to them.
Churchill was indeed a racist imperialist. He also helped to defeat Nazi Germany.
Cromwell slaughtered and oppressed Catholics. He also ended an authoritarian monarchy and created the first English Republic.
History is not a morality play.
The entire Australian state of Victoria has locked down because of just 18 cases. This is lunacy. Protests have rightly erupted in Melbourne. "Zero COVID" is a pipe dream.
This is radical stuff from Labour: extending the right to vote to 16 and 17 year olds and all those who are resident in Britain, even if they’re not UK citizens. That would be the biggest extension of the franchise since 1928. Millions would be added to the electoral roll.
Hats off to these GPs for pointing out that lockdown approach is costing more lives than it's saving. Over 30,000 excess deaths in private homes since March, 90% not
#COVID19
related. Monomaniacal focus on pandemic is foolish.
Letter sent today to Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
@MattHancock
from 66 GPs urging him to consider non-Covid harms in the response to the pandemic
This is not to mention their mishandling of the COVID19 crisis from the outset, insisting on "business as usual" - i.e. face to face teaching *during a pandemic* - well after more sensible universities had closed their doors. Contemptible.
This is completely idiotic. Theresa May's one-woman crusade against foreign students is yet another pointless blow against Britain's HE system. She apparently won't be happy until our world-class universities are reduced to smouldering rubble.
EXCLUSIVE: The government is raising tuition fees for EU students after Brexit
Home fee status and financial support to be withdrawn from EU nationals starting courses at English universities in 2021 in Theresa May's latest crackdown on foreign students
2.7m applications made and 2.5m already approved. Just SIX rejected (serious criminals). And yet from the hysterical coverage of this over three years you'd think the UK govt had been rounding up EU nationals and dumping them in the sea.
I see
@PayPalUK
has become the latest tech firm to embrace corporate censorship, cancelling service to
@UsforThemUK
and
@SpeechUnion
without explanation. I certainly won't be using them anymore until this decision is reversed and steps are taken to prevent this happening again.
The idea that a govt might seek to manipulate people is sneeringly dismissed by a man who fell hook, line and sinker for the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. 🤦♂️
Microbiologist Professor David Livermore explains why additional COVID restrictions would be pointless. Like it or not, COVID-19 is now endemic: everyone will eventually get the disease. We should beef-up the NHS to cope, and get on with our lives.
What went wrong on 12 December was that there are too many people like Paul Mason in the Labour Party who think that you can call voters fascists and racists, and devalue their votes, yet expect them to vote for you.
What went wrong on 12 December? To mark the paperback release of
#ClearBrightFuture
on 6 Feb, here's the first of a 2'20" video series about the ideas of the book, and their relevance to the struggle ahead... pls RT.
NHS bed capacity is now 7,000 lower than in March.
We are being imprisoned in our homes by a state so incompetent that it cannot even maintain - let alone increase - hospital capacity nearly a full year into a pandemic.
Arrogant liberals always think others disagreeing with them is a problem of poor education/ information (always on the others' part, of course). It's not. It's a matter of different values and preferences. The public heard your arguments in 2016. They rejected them.
Parliament's greatest failure over the past 3 years is not our inability to agree a Brexit deal. It has been our lack of collective will to educate the public and expose the lies of 2016. As a result, hard right populists are on the march, selling the same fantasy all over again.
Just in case you didn't think academia was dominated by Remainers, here's who the
@PolStudiesAssoc
just gave awards to:
Parliamentarian of the Year - Dominic Grieve
Journalist OTY - Carole Cadwalladr
Politician OTY - David Lammy
International Recognition Award - Michel Barnier
I do not like borders. Except, you know, the borders all around the EU, which we viciously police by maintaining a naval force and a chain of concentration camps to intercept migrants, so bad that humanitarian NGOs refuse to work with us. But yay no borders
"I do not like borders. Borders are scars left of the surface of the earth. We're building a political community that is not based on who is stronger, but on political agreements and democracy. We, Europeans, must be proud of it"
#EPhearings2019
Bloomberg report literally complains that a lack of cheap EU migrants to exploit means that hospitality bosses are having to treat workers better and invest in their training and career development.
You can't even make this stuff up. The British state is so reliant on management consultants and outsourcing, it uses them to help organise an inquiry into the use of management consultants and outsourcing.
Guess who’s been put in charge of preparing the “knowledge management system in preparation for the public inquiry” into Test & Trace failings? Deloitte, the very consultants who got hundreds of millions in contracts to, er, run Test & Trace. Full story in the new Eye, out now.
Ah yes, those "marginalised" people who only have on their side the CBI, the banks, the TUC leadership, most of the media, the civil service, 90% of academics, 75% of MPs etc. My heart bleeds for them.
Tories deserved to lose Brecon by-election. They re-selected their candidate after he'd been recalled (sacked) by constitutents after an expenses scandal. Showed total contempt for voters.
New York Times investigation finds the EU's common agricultural policy "is deliberately opaque, grossly undermines the EU’s environmental goals and is warped by corruption and self-dealing", fuelling "Mafia-style land grabs".
I honestly think that
#COVID19
has been the biggest single setback to rationality in public life in decades (though it builds on its steady degredation).
The insane goal of total eradication has become the de facto policy, with all manner of lunacy justified by it.
Bizarre reaction from some MPs to Nigel Farage’s speech accusing him of threatening them in some way. I heard nothing that could possibly be construed as a threat
Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper, two utterly unrepentant architects of Labour's disastrous defeat, thanks to their opposition to Brexit, now have the gall to pitch for the leadership. Cooper even says Labour has lost the trust of the working class. Indeed: thanks to her!
Whatever you think of
@brexitparty_uk
, their candidate selection and PR teams are playing a blinder. Drip-feed of interesting, unusual candidates that totally shatter the UKIP mould.
@TheIndGroup
look very amateurish by comparison.
No one cares that Matt Hancock was having an affair. What they resent was that he was doing this while telling everyone else they couldn't meet up with friends, family or even intimate partners. Time and again it's one rule for "important people", and another for the rest of us.
The rage many ordinary people feel towards Cummings/ Johnson is really a sublimated rage at the inhuman deprivations imposed by a lockdown that many of them also demanded. "If I suffer, so should everyone else" is the tragic logic. This is what lockdown does to us.
Spring 2020: Clap for carers!
Spring 2022: Sack for carers
Vaccine mandates are wrong in principle. Compounding an NHS and care home staffing crisis when capacity is already shamefully low is downright moronic.
This is a very important outcome. When's the last time you heard a major British public institution describe freedom of speech as "our most important core value"? Slowly but surely, the corner is being turned - and it's about time.
It seems that whenever and wherever working-class people assert their own political subjectivity today, the liberal elite will instantly condemn them as fascists and racists. Brexit, Gilets Jaunes, and now truckers protesting vaccine mandates.
Today in the House, Members of Parliament unanimously condemned the antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days. Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.
Appalling if true. We are approaching Israel-level vaccination rates. Israel opened up with minimal adverse consequences. We cannot cower in fear forever, and nor can we suffer the perpetual tyranny of epidemiological modellers.
NEW: Final decision Monday, but Sun can reveal chances of freedom day on June 21 now next to zero.. plan to announce delay to July 19 - with break clause on July 5 if hospitalisations remain low. But it's not looking good..
Boarding a flight to Spain to see my parents for the first time in 18 months. My thoughts are with all families still unable to reunite, and whose wish to do so is constantly overlooked with dismissive talk of "foreign holidays".
This is a crass and mentally deficient position from my union.
Universities cannot be "the care homes of a second
#COVID19
wave" because they are nothing like care homes.
1/21
UCU's call to scrap plans to reopen campuses next month makes the front page of The Observer.
We can't let universities become the care homes of a second Covid wave.
Indeed. Farage is a creature of the void between voters and the political elite. That void closed when both major parties promised to respect the referendum result. Farage disappeared; UKIP shrivelled. It is ultra-Remainers who reopened the void and brought them back.
@DrLeeJones
@MathewEJR
If Tim cared about the country he and his rebels would have accepted the majority vote instead of dividing the country with the project fear and peoples vote crap! The reason for Farage was gone and Remain rebels brought him back! THEIR FAULT! REMAINS FAULT! THEY NEED TO OWN IT!
I would rather stand with
@MichelBarnier
an honest broker, a gentleman, a European 1st & foremost, than have anything to do with the lying racist homophobic misogynistic lazy Tory buffoon
@BorisJohnson
who can’t even comb his hair or bother to do up his jacket properly
#Brexit
Danes push ahead with return to pre-COVID normality despite much lower vaccination rate than UK. With the elderly/ at-risk vaccinated, we can tolerate rising infections as hospitalisations/ deaths won't rise.
I'll save you 18 months and millions of pounds. Confining people to their homes will tend to drive them to drink, while depriving them of medical care will tend to compound bodily harm arising from this. You're welcome.
An urgent inquiry is needed to understand why deaths from alcohol hit record levels in England and Wales in the first nine months of 2020, experts have said
The bishops ask: if international treaties are broken, "on what foundations does our democracy stand?"
But the foundation of democracy is the will of the electorate, not international law. This fundamental mistake is widespread among liberals.
in case you haven’t seen it here is today’s letter to
@FT
from Britain’s five most senior bishops criticising the “disastrous precedent” of the internal market bill
The abandonment of class struggle in favour of a woke rainbow has enabled the left to "organise to win" what, exactly? Labour hasn't won an election since 2005. It's a failed experiment. Meanwhile Tories pitch to working class & win.
We don’t build movements or organise to win like this. Those who view the struggles of women, lgbtq+ or disabled ppl, migrants, or BAME communities as secondary have no place in our movement. This isn’t just politics, it reveals how they value ppl. It’s their political praxis🗑
Maybe because most of them aren't jetsetting bankers and don't actually benefit from free movement of labour? Does that blow your (evidently rather narrow) mind?
Today I left home in Amsterdam, worked in Switzerland, did financial services work through a Dutch company, then flew back from an airport in France.
Still blows my mind that British public have voted to be the only Europeans not be able to do this, in just 11 months time.
I struggle to understand why so many people are only now waking up to the fact that lockdown means living under a highly authoritarian regime that has outlawed political protest. I guess a slave who never moves does not feel their chains.
This could be your daughter, your sister, your girlfriend, your colleague, your friend. Like most of us, she is fearful and frustrated because women don’t feel safe on our streets. And then this...
Exclusive:
Dominic Grieve will tomorrow hold a meeting with senior members of Emmanuel Macron's Govt to discuss extending A50 as path to 2nd referendum
Nathalie Loiseau will attend meeting in Grieve's parliamentary office with her advisers & officials
Whatever you think of Brexit, this is wrong. Complex international agreements with massive implications for future policy should not be rammed through national parliaments in two days. This is the EU way of doing things - secretive talks, with parliaments bounced into ratifying.
Apparently people still need to hear this: there is basically no evidence that mask-wearing prevents respiratory virus transmission in the community. This has been known for decades. No randomised control trial has proven otherwise. 1/2
@gillott_john
Here is the Public Health England study to which I referred, which shows no variation case rates among un/vaccinated:
And here is the Lancet study showing no variation in transmissibility:
This happens to me all the time. It's essentially an interest-free loan from me to my employer, just so I can do my job. I don't see how junior/precarious colleagues can afford this.
Ah, Owen Jones. As ever, swivelling so quickly that he generates his own electrical current. So sad that he was born too late for his true calling: to serve in an Eastern Bloc propaganda department.
Hard to think of any member of the useless British elite so poorly qualified and yet so lavishly rewarded with undeserved sinecures. Meritocracy? Don't make me laugh.
Tony Blair and John Major refused to offer 3m HK citizens these rights, but Boris Johnson does it without a whisper of protest. A tale about Britain’s complex debate on immigration - and how we ended up doing the right thing
There you have it: a direct admission that the EU's internal freedom of movement relies on Fortress Europe. All those dead bodies in the Med, barbed wire in the Balkans, and concentration camps in Turkey, Greece and Libya? That's the flip side of your cherished liberal freedom.
For four years we fought to get a European Border & Coast Guard. EU countries were blocking, but we managed to get it done: 10000 extra border officers. We should not wait for 2027, but do it now! We need to better protect our external borders to keep our internal EU borders open
"The word 'Fascism' has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies 'something not desirable'."
- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Govt *still* overstating the seriousness of COVID-19 by including in hospitalisation stats some 26% of people who were admitted for other reasons then happened to test positive.
COVID-19 used as a reason to avoid elections in Italy and usher in another unelected neoliberal technocrat as prime minister: former EU central banker and scourge of Greece, Mario Draghi. Awful.
@lisanandy
... plus there is a socialist principle here: the right of nations to self-determination. The non-nationalist Catalan left (eg En Comu) defended the nationalist leaders against Madrid's repression for that reason.
I honestly think the restraint shown by Leave voters after 2.5yrs of constant abuse is nothing short of remarkable. And they're accused - among other things - of being intolerant!
In Shanghai, people are literally running out of food after 16 days of lockdown while anyone who tests positive is being hauled off to a detention centre for quarantine. This is where "zero COVID" leads. Anyone still think China's approach admirable or worth emulating?
As seen on Weibo: Shanghai residents go to their balconies to sing & protest lack of supplies. A drone appears: “Please comply w covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”
- meanwhile QMUL simply ignores all representation from our union & even excludes staff reps from COVID19 planning
... now do you begin to see why we felt a need strike in the first place?
This conduct is symptomatic of a deep crisis in UK HE.
Remarkable. After all the claims that the City would go into meltdown in the event of Brexit, let alone no deal, a tiny story reveals that, in fact, nothing will change.
Lockdown fails to bring cases down in Sydney, so the solution is obviously... more lockdown. It has the status of a religious belief at this point. Perform rain ritual. No rain? You must not have performed it devoutly enough!