A train to London (1.5 hour journey) would cost me over £180 return right now. Its not the rail unions holding us to ransom, its the rail companies, who take handsome profits by squeezing both public subsidies, and the travelling public.
#SolidarityRMT
I'm so very tired of this Big Society rubbish. Be a 'dementia friend'. Be a 'peer mentor'. Be an unpaid carer. Be a 'self-help group'. Be a well-meaning volunteer. Be anything, just don't expect to be a trained professional on proper pay, or a service user getting proper support.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this plays out:
“You haven’t done your daily mile. Your ill health is your own fault. We’re scrapping your free NHS treatment”
“You’ve walked 200m. You’re obviously fit for work. We’re cutting your benefits”
Former chief Constable of Durham Police: “Just when we should have a government & people in the government leading by example we’ve actually got them somehow operating in a bubble of selfish privilege & denial. It frankly beggars belief” 💥
Faiza Shaheen liked a friend's tweet about the Green Party, years ago, when she wasn't even Labour Party member, and is told that's part of why she's banned. Yet Elphicke spent years slagging Labour & she's fine?!
“Honestly I’m so shocked right now, to be treated this badly”
Faiza Shaheen, who was set to stand for Labour, describes hearing that her candidacy had been pulled over liking a series of Tweets which she claims Labour said would frustrate its campaign
#Newsnight
Giles Coren has deleted his sickening tweet in which he laughed his head off at the untimely death of a talented journalist aged just 33, who he seems to have hated because she had the temerity to point out his inherited privilege. But I bet he gets to keep his Times column.
This is heart-breaking to watch. 💔She’s 70 years old for Chrissake. Our longest-serving black MP. Between Hoyle, Starmer and Sunak she’s been silenced whilst men discuss whether it’s ok to take money from someone who’s said she should be shot. For shame.
Govt: “Britons! Be slim & healthy like Europeans!”
Britons: “Great! Can we have Euro-style shorter working hours & commutes so we have time & energy to cook properly & exercise, & Euro-style wage & social security protection so we can afford to?”
Govt: “no not like that”
Saddened to see the children’s minister digging out one story from several weeks old Hull local paper that quoted one anonymous supermarket worker with no corroboration, to suit political narrative of blaming & shaming poor parents.
Saddened to hear of incidents of some parents using free school meals vouchers for alcohol & non food products despite clear restrictions & also threatening supermarket staff.
Am speaking to all supermarkets on what more can be done to protect staff and make sure kids get food.
What is this language of secondary schools "running at a loss", "in deficit"? Same language as hospitals being "in deficit". They're not businesses, they're public services, that are *underfunded*
Personally I don’t see why Labour should expect my union, Unite, to continue to handover cash without a complaint, when Labour has just failed to oppose a bill that allows trade union activists to be spied on for no other reason than standing up for their members.
Whenever I think of Suella Braverman I always think about the school where she was head of the governors, that made a kid who's mum hadn't been able to pay his term's dinner money, sit in isolation on short rations.
Really not loving the idea of her overseeing CPS & legal issues
This piece by
@OborneTweets
was too hot for other outlets to handle - proud that
@openDemocracy
has published: names names on how press, BBC & ITV are so lazy/keen on privileged access to No.10, that they’re spreading disinformation & fake news in exchange
Could someone tell me why a 30-year old management consultant earning £48k a year should pay a lower rate of tax than a 40-year old cleaner earning £18k a year?
(I’ll wait...)
A far right man kills an MP. 2 rightwing papers publish headlines that are cited in death threats to MPs, + headline sneers at Abbott's appearance + compares migrants to cockroaches & rats.
But Chris Grayling says hate is the left's fault (& BBC gives him space to do it)
“A significant part of the blame lies with parts of the labour movement… it is bringing a nastiness into our politics” - Transport Secretary Chris Grayling on threats towards MPs
If you or I 'inadvertently misled' Esther McVey's Department, we'd get a benefit sanction of up to 2 years & possibly criminal prosecution, but when she 'inadvertently misleads' our elected parliament she thinks she should get away with a slap on the wrist
The only thing I blooming hate about living in the shires is the pesky Boxing Day hunts. As someone said, if it was working class lads on mopeds chasing animals around the streets they’d soon be arrested, so what’s the difference?
Labour banned fox hunting in 2004 – but the Tories refuse to properly stamp out this barbaric practice and fox hunting is as popular as ever.
Sign our petition to end fox hunting for good 👇
@realDonaldTrump
Thanks for reminding me to report a few of Hatie Kopkins’ recent dishonest & hate filled tweets, Donald. Also note that she’s lying when she says Brits like you & only Khan doesn't. Three quarters of Brits don’t like you, recent opinion polls show.
You’d almost think we were run by a cadre of men who were sent away to boarding school too young to develop an instinctive understanding of how most normal families function, wouldn’t you?
Please, folks, do yourself, me & everyone else a favour & mute Piers Morgan, & all other shock jocks with nothing of value to say and whose *only* public function is to irritate you and then to trend & self-promote on the back of your irritation.
Dear
@bbc
if today’s UN report on
#poverty
in Britain doesn’t feature prominently on the news later then all your supposed concern about
#ChildrenInNeed
#childreninneed2018
is going to ring very, very hollow this evening
People who have messaged me who’re being told by their bosses to go into work tomorrow include:
Construction workers
WHSmith & JD Sports staff
Debt collectors
Airplane manufacturers
(I kid you not)
This is madness. And the government is allowing it.
Millennials! Give up your expensive coffee habit, pack your own sarnies, and you can afford to buy your own home!
But also
Millienials! Your expensive coffee and sarnie habit is the only thing keeping the British economy afloat!
Boris Johnson tells us: “We are absolutely resolved. There will be no sale of the NHS, no privatisation.”
Look at the message US private healthcare firms are giving their investors, however, and a different story emerges.
This is explosive >
Wow Matt Hancock actually just told MPs that they give the National Serco Tracing service the “easy” bits of contact tracing and leave the more difficult stuff to the public sector. Students of privatisation will of course recognise this model, and the stress and mess it produces
Labour's announcement today on pre-payment meters is worth a grand total of... £4.70 a month for the next 6 months, according to their *own* figures.
Rachel Reeves team didn't want to admit this to me, but they couldn't deny it.
Their press release misled some journos cos /
@Peston
Your fellow professionals - pretty much all of them - are saying you should stop facilitating the government announcing such massive policies in a way that leaves huge and emotionally devastating questions unanswered and leaves no-one properly accountable.
Labour will never win by fighting the right for the flag-waving vote. You can kowtow to Buckingham Palace & demand the BBC proms play the words to Rule Britannia all you like, you still can’t out-“patriot” someone who literally chases “war with France” headlines on Election Day.
I don’t have strong feelings about the Queen as a person.
What I detest is how we’re trained to see the monarchy as relatives, with whom we have reciprocal love.
That’s a deliberate con. Their role is to humanise the persistence of aristocracy, empire, & egregious inequality.
So Dido Harding’s reward for presiding over the privatised NHS Test and Trace disaster is to get an expanded empire that absorbs into it, the one bit of the system, Public Health England, that’s actually been hitting targets, mopping up & providing cover for the failing system?
My story above includes a bit of explanation about how they pulled this sleight of hand, which basically is about relying on existing public and Public Health England workers, oh and volunteers, to cover over the gaping holes in the private contracts (sound familiar?!)
12/n
It’s almost as if the whole test & trace was designed with more regard to the parallel private healthcare system being created, than to integrating with our existing public NHS, isn’t it?
@DamoB1970
Hi Damian,
If your test took place in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital, or as part of national surveillance testing conducted by the Office for National Statistics, test results cannot currently be linked with the app whether they’re positive or negative.
Thanks.
My political journey:
1992: Labour
1997: Labour
2001: Labour
2005: Labour
2010: Labour
2015: Labour
2017: Labour
2019: Labour
2024: Green 💚✅
How about you?
#votegreen
#GE2024
As someone who went to Cambridge from a very ordinary comprehensive I feel like I’ve said countless times that I found it to be stuffed full of not very bright people who felt it was their entitled birthright to rule the country.
#oxbridge
Why do we love this exchange between Jay Rayner & Young/Vine so much? Because they make explicit appeals to the privileged class’s lifelong code of loyalty & mutual protection - and it’s rare, shocking & wonderful to see that code so explicitly rejected. 😁
@WestminsterWAG
@toadmeister
The two of you have both made a terrible mistake here. You've have confused me knowing you, with holding either of you in any regard whatsoever. And Toby, if I'd done something so terrible that you coming to my aid might help, I'd deserve to be left for dead.
I went on holiday to the world’s *most vaccinated* country, and masks are still compulsory indoors.
What *is* Johnson’s problem with a simple public health measure?
Imagine a Labour Party that’s happy to step back & help Farage become an MP, whilst throwing everything they’ve got at stopping the Greens getting MPs in Bristol & Brighton etc. Oh no wait you don’t have to imagine. Because that’s who they are.
#votegreen
I see today's Daily Mail front page is calling for Mail readers to become 'an army of volunteers to transform our NHS'. So I'm just going to re-attach this thread
I'm so very tired of this Big Society rubbish. Be a 'dementia friend'. Be a 'peer mentor'. Be an unpaid carer. Be a 'self-help group'. Be a well-meaning volunteer. Be anything, just don't expect to be a trained professional on proper pay, or a service user getting proper support.
Last year Starmer’s Labour told its cllrs in Stroud that if they continued in 10 year old coalition with Greens they would be expelled. Only options for those Lab Cllrs were to obey & see Tory minority admin take charge, OR resign Lab & work with greens as indies. They did latter
A fifth of new Tory MPs have worked as lobbyists, including for
private healthcare and arms manufacturers
New investigation for
@opendemocracyuk
by
@CaveTamasin
,
@AdamRamsay
and me
To be a Labour MP, you *have* to be a member of a union (unless you're unable ie police/army).
Which is weird really because it seems now if you are a Labour MP with any ambition you are told to stop doing what any good trade unionist does (showing solidarity with your fellows).
Give me an MP living in a council house and in touch with the concerns of ordinary people, than an MP claiming expenses for stables, duckhouses and moats, any day of the week.
Sickens me that our media is still discussing seriously “Boris Johnson’s leadership ambitions” after a week when his callous & sexualised comments about child abuse should really have ended his career once & for all.
had a very friendly chat with my labour parliamentary candidate today
told him I wasn’t voting for him (will be 1st time I’ve not voted Labour in a GE) largely cos of Wes Streeting & Labour’s lousy policy on NHS & benefits (also their failure to stand up against rising racism)
Back in November I uncovered how government had given Deloitte £40m in July alone, for their work on “NHS Test and Trace”, but government couldn’t/wouldn’t point to any published contract. Now they admit it’s costing us £1m a day - & for what, exactly?
C4news tonight leads with brilliant investigative journalism uncovering dodgy, democracy corrupting elites
Newsnight leads with giving the elites a platform to defend themselves
Tells you all you need to know about the sad demise of
#newsnight
#CambridgeAnalyticaUncovered
If you're still wondering 'how could
#Grenfell
happen' the fact that Guido's smears of the local Labour MP, timed to wreck coverage of her report into inequality & Grenfell - indeed got more BBC coverage than her report did. Tells you what - & who - matters to the establishment.
I love the point in this interview when Mick Lynch succinctly explains how corporation tax works and the interviewers stop interrupting as the penny drops that he understands economics much better than they do
“Those of us on PAYE can’t avoid tax, it’s taken out of our wages. But there are many people in this country who avoid tax like it’s some kind of disease.”
-
@RMTunion
’s Mick Lynch
This week the government duped us.
It spun that its failed national contact tracing scheme was transforming into a proper local system.
& the media bought the spin.
Save this thread, so when in a couple of months you ask why tracing STILL not working, you have receipts!
1/n
Actually the CEO of Boots alongside Starmer *is* a big deal, given that (US-owned) Boots have been stealthily grabbing all sorts of services the NHS used to provide, & are lobbying hard for more of this kind of privatisation (from tests & diagnostics to private GPs).
This is - by some measure - the most impressive event this Labour leadership has ever assembled. Guests inc CEO of Boots, senior counter terror officer, a terminal cancer patient... each one linked to a key offer to the public.
It's a big contrast to Sunak's speech on Monday..
Oh, and.... Be an 'ambassador'. Be an 'advocate'. Not a real ambassador or advocate of course, not someone with any real power to hold authorities to account. Just for god's sake, make it look like someone's doing *something*, whilst the government tears up the welfare state!
Honestly I have lost all patience with this nonsense. Given Labour is headed for a landslide, calling for people to vote against the Greens in the handful of seats they have a good chance of winning, is just wrecking tactics, Dale.
I’ve written a piece for
@bristol247
about why I’m asking people thinking about voting Green in Bristol Central to lend Labour their vote and judge them on their first term. Why? Because only Labour can deliver a green government.
The NHS is not for sale, no.
They’re *giving* it away.
Actually, not even giving it away.
They’re (we’re) *paying* companies to take chunks of it over to run for profit.
And that’s already happening, tho US trade deal will worsen.
Political language is a slippery thing, eh Matt?
My American friends, know this: The NHS is not for sale. Yes we’d love to make it cheaper to buy your life-saving pharmaceuticals - but the NHS will not be on the table in any future trade talks.
I hate the use of the word “reform” as a euphemism for “privatisation” - wish the BBC headline writers wouldn’t buy into it. Say it like it is - “privatisation has failed”. Handing over wads of cash in crap contracts with useless firms isn’t “reform”.
“I was chief whip and I’ve got the whip’s book of dirty secrets that we use to blackmail MPs into voting the right way, look I’ve arranged an actual whip & book on my desk to remind you you can’t sack me even tho I’ve colossally screwed up”
God, what a sinister way to carry on.
Photo du jour: Education Secretary
@GavinWilliamson
in his office at the Dept for Education today after announcing a change in the way A-Level grades will be awarded. By Stefan Rousseau/PA
Before you believe a single word in that Telegraph story about the “failing” Public Health England and the idea that Dido Harding & her Test and Trace scheme are the right people to take over, you need to read this... we are through the Looking Glass
RT if you agree that 'think tanks' who keep their corporate funders highly secret should not be invited onto
@BBC
(tobacco-funded IEA on
#newsnight
last night trashing public health 'moaners')
I have never, ever seen a more catastrophic performance by a prime minister, and my memory goes back quite a long way... anyone else?
#LiaisonCommittee
PM has just said “I’m not giving you a deadline right now. I have been forbidden from announcing any more targets”
By whom? He’s the *actual prime minister*
i forgot some Big Society bullshit bingo. be a 'mental health champion'. Be 'resilient'. Be a 'co-producer of your own care'. Be a 'partner'. Be a 'social entrepreneur'. Be an 'asset'. Be a 'renewable resource' (as NHS boss Simon Stevens called unpaid carers). Gahhhhhhh.
This is a pretty good example of how “healthcare” has been gradually rebranded “social care” so that you can be charged for it. It’s a trick that’s been going on for years & which mainstream politicians & hacks mostly ignore.
@wesstreeting
Hi Wes! You forgot a big part of the team - your advisors! I’m sure that was inadvertent, so let me fill it in for you! First, there’s Paul Corrigan, who advocated private companies taking over NHS hospitals…
Hey Matt:
1. Your govt cut £700m from public health budgets, so>
2. NHS weight loss & stop smoking clinics scrapped/replaced with “apps”.
3. Biggest causes of ill health=inequality, poverty, over-work, late/inappropriate treatment. All of which your govt is worsening.
#r4today
@IanDunt
There are certainly a lot of people who were happy to add to the disproportionate and snarky pile-ons she so regularly faced over the years...
I seriously don’t get the whole “hooray, Hunt is no longer health secretary” thing. Don’t people remember when Lansley went and people were like “well, no-one could be worse than Lansley”. These people are the representatives of big capital and it’s *structural* not personal.
@realDonaldTrump
Incidentally, I’ve had her blocked for ages (highly recommended) so if it wasn’t for you, Donald, I’d never see her odious racism, thankfully.
.
@GloucesterCity
council has refused permission for a 2nd night shelter before Xmas on the basis it's 'enabling' homeless people & not 'motivating' them 😡😡😡btw it was minus 13 round here on Monday night
Dear
@sarahwollaston
I see you have said that people over 40 should pay an extra health and social care tax.
Why not just get people with *more money* to pay extra tax?
Yours
A not very well off 44 year old.
Remember when BBC falsely reported a Syria protest hd taken place at Stella Creasy’s home (in fact it was a vicar-led candlelit vigil at CLP office), Creasy took 2 days to correct the reports, & Tom Watson smeared the protestors “trots & rabble”?
#r4today
RT if you agree that
#bbcqt
/
@bbc
in general shouldn't invite on 'think tanks' who keep their corporate funders highly secret (Kate Andrews of the hard right IEA is ubiquitous these days, on tonight's Question Time too) (graphic via Transparify)
Woah.... the minister now being interviewed about the disastrous Serco contract, was formerly head of Public Affairs for Serco?
Fair play to Nick Robinson for that ambush.
Argar sounds arrogantly miffed & suprised Robinson would even raise it.
#r4today
Quote of the week (regardless of all the other explosive quotes) has to be Rachel Johnson, when asked where Boris is getting his advice from: "It could be, who knows, people who have invested billions in shorting the pound…. in expectation of a No Deal Brexit”
Why I agree with Miriam Margolyes about Jeremy Hunt. The idea he's a moderate in whose hands public services are now safe, requires a very selective memory about what Hunt did to the NHS...
The entire legal profession told government that legal aid cuts were a catastrophe that would deny justice to many. They simply didn’t care. Now one Tory MP has learned the hard way.
The idea that “Brits in Spain”=Expats deserving special treatment, but “Spaniards in Britain”=migrants who deserve a hostile environment, is probably the single stupidest idea behind the Brexit vote and its hold can be laid at the feet of colonialist mindsets & ofc the Daily Fail