вільна Україна – Free Ukraine

Online exchanges 22 February 2022 > now.
News at the top – history at the bottom

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The World War has started & Ukraine is its Manchuria. The stark division is between ‘Carbonist’ autocracies determined to burn every ounce of fossil fuel in pursuit of political and military power & the relatively sane world. The future is SCIENTIFICALLY apocalyptic. Terrifying

n, as during the last 30 years, many of them are a different colour and culture to the suspicious natives.
View discussion

War gave us the Red Cross. Now climate disaster means we need a Green Cross too
9 Jan 2024 11:56
In response to Reason4
On balance, and compared with the Carbonist world, even Britain is still a basically scientific culture.
Naturally , those states most in hoc to consumerist dogma are conflicted. But they will have to choose between Consumerism and Cooperation soon, or end up as part of the coalition of science-denying death.
The war will be won when the cost of renewable energy undercuts that of fossil fuels. That will require the same radical measures needed to win any worthwhile war.
View discussion

War gave us the Red Cross. Now climate disaster means we need a Green Cross too
9 Jan 2024 11:16
But we can’t always get what we want, or need.
What we’ve got instead is a de facto world war between Carbonist and ZeroC02 coalitions. Between authoritarian oligarchies clinging to carbon energy to the death, and the tattered remains of the democratic world clinging to science and the hope of a sustainable future..
And the sooner we realise it the better.
The Pessimist case is that the radical policies needed to achieve Zero CO2 are driving people into the arms to dictators. In the same way, a blindfolded man will always fall down stairs.
Just let him see and he will always choose the politics of life before those of death.
View discussion

@Biginabox
Humour is and always has been quintessentially egalitarian. Debunking authority & privilege with every custard pie.
The policeman & toff getting the pie in the face is funny.
Them humiliating the orphan isn’t – except to sickoes like Trump
‘Every joke is a tiny revolution’ Orwell

Yes, tiredness is ravaging the Ukrainian soldiers I meet. But they never think of giving up
15 Dec 2023 15:49
The doom-mongers forget that Ukraine has held its ground without any credible air-support. An essential arm of any territorial campaign.
When this arrives – as promised – there will be a much more level battlefield.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
More like Pre-Apocalyptic Panic Playbook. And not without scientific, rational good reason. If we don’t get a wriggle on, before long, before the lights go out or anything, people will just stop caring, and stop believing in a future. History shows what happens next.

Of course the Tories will do anything to stop migrants. You know the ones: students, carers, nurses …
8 Dec 2023 11:04
He seems prepared to throw any concept of Truth on the sacrificial alter of xenophobia.
But why would a NatC regime like his be prepared to deliver the awesome power of the 1984 Act into the hands of a labour administration, as it will next year?
Starmer should be licking his lips at the prospect, and giving his MPs a free vote to ensure the bill’s passage. This degree of power is a great liberator for a political leader. Shakes the shackles off.
Then beware gutter media, your end is nigh.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The 1984 Act does much more. It subverts any practical interpretation of truth. An Absolute Rule by the Divine Right of Ministers. Not only the worst policy in history, but the most sinister. And if it keeps the NatCs in power, possibly the last, as we understand politics.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
When Labour inherit Sunak’s 1984 Act next year, what should be the first thing they use it for? How about sorting out the media that are so keen now to promote this death-sentence of Truth? Leveson 2? No arguments.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Perfectly ordinary and predictable from the High Priest of a bankrupt dogma.
The Rwanda Plan and its 1984 Act are the most sinister edicts ever issued by a British Government since the expulsion of the Jews by Edward I.
A licence to invent reality.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Sorry I was too cryptic. But you still monumentally miss the point. Why would the NatCs hand over such magisterial power to a regime they profess to hate? As they will when they lose the election next year. Or do they think they can use the 1984 Act to cling to power forever?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
When Labour inherit this awesome power next year, what they will they use it for first? Does Quentin Rees-Smogg and his goats really want to hand over Absolute Rule to the communist Starmer?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Sunak just announced 1984, where the Party Knows Best.
Another level of insanity.

UK politics live: Robert Jenrick resigns over immigration policy – as it happened
6 Dec 2023 12:35
Johnson implied that his dog-eat-dog management culture was a sign of vitality. ‘Just human nature’.
He needs to be reminded that his Neo-Darwinist teambuilding technique is identical to the creed of chaos which defined the power-structure of the 3rd Reich.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
This is what happens when nationalist scum hijack human values, pervert them out of existence and hide behind them like terrorists in a hospital. The ‘Humanist Shield’ which allows Putin to brand any critic of HIS genocide a ‘Russophobe’.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Empty Gaza, and never let them back. Total ETHNIC CLEANSING is the plan. The FINAL SOLUTION. Gazans don’t want to surrender their land to Zionist landgrabbers. And no Arab country will collude with Zionism.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Absolutely. But criminalise and castrate trade unions, abolish free further education, and this is the result. A NatC Cabinet crammed with old Etonians has no right to lecture anyone on elitism.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The Zionists’ ‘Humanist Shield’ has given the green light to every dictatorship on Earth.
Criticise Putin, and you’re now a ‘Russo-phobe’.
Perverting the meaning of racism is a cancer on rational thought itself.
Which is why they do it.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Carry on. In a few years you will have dissolved 75 years of global sympathy with the acid of your nationalistic hate. The Shoah will have been in vain. People WILL forget. The ‘state’ of Israel will be even more of a state of war than ever.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘inadvertent’ my arse. Netanyahu has been waiting for this chance for decades. Now he’s taken the bait, and will pour the entire stock of historic sympathy for the Sons of Isaac down the drain, if his crazed nationalist crusade continues.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
A NO-State solution would work, IF the contending religions are sincere in their beliefs.
A World Heritage Centre of unique spiritual significance, administered by a dedicated branch of the UN. Didn’t Eleanor Roosevelt or someone suggest something similar?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
More facile 6th form debating society sophistry.
And to correct the record – again, ‘From the River to the Sea’ is a ZIONIST slogan.
“between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” (Likud 1977)
That DID mean the total domination of the Zionist state.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Stop quibbling and admit what you know. Israel is not so much a state as a state of war. It will never be at peace with its neighbours or itself until it recognises the innate rights of the inhabitants regardless of the Masada, or Hadrian’s final solution to the Bar Kokhba revolt

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Tell that to the hundreds of displaced palestinians on the West Bank whose home have been stolen or torched since the ‘ceasefire’. Tell it to the parents of the kidnapped children.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Gaza is like watching Hiroshima in slow motion. Or a queue of 2 Million shuffling into extermination before the eyes of the world. Anyone still prepared to haggle and nitpick over the semantics of genocide in the face of this & Netanyahu’s declared objectives is less than human.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
My BBC4 knowledge of Jewish history can’t help but see a direct echo of Hadrian’s final solution of the Bar Kohkba revolution of 135AD, and Netanyahu’s solution for Gaza. It’s that shameful.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
What would you like Labour to use the 1984 Act for first? When they inherit it next year. Something to clean up the media gutter would be in everyone’s interest, except the billionaires and their political poodles.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
If the terrorist who killed Yitzak Rabin hadn’t been ignored by Sin Bet, Israel would now be probably a safe place to live, with hopes of a future.
Instead of the living nightmare it is.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How much more slaughter do you need? You’ve seen the pictures of dead Gazan children. When they look like the walking skeletons of Ethiopia or Belsen, will you acquire some humanity then?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
“Populist” is just a polite term for OPPORTUNIST. For SPIV. For HATEMONGER. When you’ve purged Britain of all its foreigners, will you be applying to work in a carehome?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Interesting that Sunak’s 1984 Law does the same job as Netanyahu’s attempt to crush the Israeli courts. The same job as Hitler’s ‘Enabling Act’ of 1933.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
More like Pre-Apocalyptic Panic Playbook. And not without scientific, rational good reason. If we don’t get a wriggle on, before long, before the lights go out or anything, people will just stop caring, and stop believing in a future. History shows what happens next.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Sunak should be shitting his pants at what Labour could use the 1984 Act for when they take power next year. Unimpeded, it can hardly ignore the Media Crimes of the last 10 years. Hard measures to destroy the tyranny of money over the media are essential, please. Leveson 3.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The 1984 Act does much more. It subverts any practical interpretation of truth. An Absolute Rule by the Divine Right of Ministers. Not only the worst policy in history, but the most sinister. And if it keeps the NatCs in power, possibly the last, as we understand politics.

Rob Kenyon 
@Biginabox
Who shoots a 9 year old boy in the back? The brave IDF.
WHO BOMBS THEIR OWN HOSTAGES? The IDF.
Who is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing? The IDF.
Zionism is killing Israel.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
There would be no Welfare State without multiculturalism.
There is no such thing as ‘monoculturalism’ anywhere.
It was tried in Germany for a decade and failed.
Never in Britain.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
There have been no threats to public order on any of the Peace Marches. Whereas whenever the EDL fascists turn up, there’s hate and clashes. Highly stoked and incited by the criminal actions of the NatC party. Cruella could do 6 months under the 1986 Public Order Act.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
What Dr King REALLY thought about Israel. (Not the fake letters being peddled by Zionist apologists.)

What MLK Actually Thought About Israel and Palestine
From jacobin.com

The climate emergency really is a new type of crisis – consider the ‘triple inequality’ at the heart of it
23 Nov 2023 17:40
Until climate science enlightened us, we were no more unaware of our mortality as a species than a dog or horse or rat is.
Unlike previous rumours of Armageddon, this one was foretold by the un-miraculous methods we take for granted, and can no more be denied than the existence of TV.
Result – a global identity crisis heralding a wave of neo-fascist dictators and the ritual bonfire of rational thought..
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@biginabox
What ‘antisemitism’? The only hate is that which you incited. Your fascist poodles were banned by the organisers yesterday. Now they’re as ‘BIASED’ as the police. How can you defend the one and attack the other? Neither is on your side.
Zionism is NOT Judaism

Image

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You’ve logically painted yourself in the same corner as Cruella. By apologising for Zionist atrocities, you end up apologising for fascists – who were obviously intimidating to the Jewish community yesterday, and who were rightly defused by the police at their request. Job done.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
No evidence that anyone on any of the Peace Marches called for Jihad. 500,000 each week called for peace. Wearing poppies. To prevent genocide. The largest collective peace demonstration in British history. 
flickr.com
Gaza Armistice March
With poppy.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
What ‘anti-semitic march’? There was an Anti-Racist march for peace on Saturday, and an Anti-anti-semitism march yesterday. Why couldn’t they have come on Saturday?
Plenty did on each weekend. All Racisms are equal.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Tricky for Cruella. The people she accuses the police of being ‘biased’ against are banned by the Jewish community she is exploiting to gain power. Coming after her pet fascists pissed on the carpet 2 weeks ago, how does she explain Jewish ‘bias’ away?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The only way to avert even more hostility to Israel is PEACE. Ever child tortured in Israeli custody breeds ten more fanatics. You will see far more Anti-Zionism as history unearths Israel’s war-crimes.
‘Anti-semitism’ is a different animal. Don’t abuse it as a ‘Humanist Shield’

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Every civilised person has said the same thing. STOP SLAUGHTERING CHILDREN. ‘Simple’ enough for you? Zionism is Racism. To deny this is to deny reality.
How many today were demanding the end to torture of children in Zionist jails?

A woman in distress holds her hands to her face

Israel: Palestinian children still being tortured in Israeli prisons
From omct.org

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Throughout its grisly, squalid, blood-soaked history, Ultra-nationalism never relied on evidence, just fear ignorance and hate. Zionism is the cancer of the ‘Promised Land’.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘Some people’ include the UN, and several other independent organisations. The word of the IDF is the word of a police state in crisis. Discovered any tunnels in Gaza you didn’t build yourselves yet?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Name one of these ‘experts’? Are they from the same school of ‘experts’ that denies global warming?
The stated agenda of Netanyahu’s cabinet is fascist, as predicted by Einstein – a real expert.
The ethnic cleansing and massacres are not a matter of debate but record.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘Unity’ with what agenda? Do you mean Israel or the Jewish people? Not the same thing at all. Don’t abuse a religion with Land-grab politics. That’s a Shonda. As millions of Jews know.

Image

Britain’s addiction to cars is built on a financial house of cards
22 Nov 2023 15:55
A car is not merely a means of transport.
In our sick culture it is also a security-blanket, a status-symbol and a weapon.
An entitlement-machine which imbues the addict with super-powers, feeding the craving for superiority.
Whether electric or fossil-fuelled, they are not a vision of the future.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 17:27
In response to Mousey
The fact is that the richest are the most to blame., and the toxic quasi-religious suicidal profit-cult they impose on the world,
Not opinion, just counting.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 17:23
In response to Ilikespoons
More precisely, how much are you worth investing in.
Whether you can turn a profit.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 17:20
In response to sciencemattersmore
If you want to know your socio-economic class, there are dozens of online credit-rating sites which have got everything down to a fine art.
Your class is defined by how much credit your bank manager will give you, and at what rate of interest.
It’s the simplest thing in the world. And one of the oldest.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 17:17
In response to gallerymouse
Two tealights will comfortably heat an average room (with curtains) for a night.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 17:15
In response to Imtryingdamnit
I’ve no idea which words of mine you’re reading.
I don’t regard environmentalism as an elite issue. But much of the working class has been persuaded to so so.
Otherwise there would be no need for articles in the Guardian calling for activism which doesn’t inconvenience the working classes.
Naturally they will be hit hardest by climate change as they are by all radical changes. That doesn’t mean they are allowed to see them coming.
In fact, they are promised Utopia if they ignore the science.
If the working classes en-masse knew they were being exploited – had achieved CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS – they would have done something definitive about it.
They still don’t feel they are being robbed, and so we are still trapped in the Consumerist pigsty, treated like cattle.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 14:40
In response to Imtryingdamnit
Does not compute.
If the working classes always acted in their own interest, the world would be a totally different place.
It is essential that they don’t, and everything is done to guarantee they never will. The Westminster shitshow of the last 5 years should have taught you better.
You’re denying that Ignorance still ‘stalks the land’.
The ultimate denial.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 12:27
In response to Imtryingdamnit
Only if you deny the reality of class division.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 12:26
In response to Monica1066
Of course it’s tribalist.
But it’s also true.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 11:00
In response to trevor44
A you say, the ignorant masses do not have the time to worry their little heads about such things.
Virtually all human progress has been based on the ability of a leisured minority to think and innovate.
From the first grain sown in hope.
View discussion

Of course working-class people care about the climate crisis: they emit the least, but will suffer most
21 Nov 2023 10:56
Student issues have never been popular with the working classes.
It’s another case of Dylan versus Heavy Metal.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox 
There is still no evidence that Al Shifa was part of any sinister network. There SHOULD be evidence by now since the IDF has had access to thousands of building which would have been part of such a thing. But still nothing conclusive. Nothing to justify a massacre.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
As a bigot willing to judge an event you did not experience, you are in no position to judge the BBC. In fact the Peace Marches were overwhelmingly legal and good-natured, given the provocation. Nobody threw fireworks at anyone. Whereas your fascist mob..
flickr.com
GAZA ARMISTICE MARCH
Two minutes silence.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
A society which calls itself a ‘democracy’ has a responsibility to act like one. And not like an Iron-Age tyranny, starving and bombarding an innocent population into bloody extinction. As on the hill of Betar.

en.wikipedia.org
Bar Kokhba revolt – Wikipedia

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Everyone is a terrorist according to Israel. It has declared Total War and is following those rules. Why else would it massacre babies? It should know better.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
If there was a ‘network’ which included Al Shifa, the IDF would have discovered it under the first few buildings they occupied. There will turn out to be tunnels. But the lie that medics are terrorists is tantamount to a Blood Libel.

The Gaza crisis has brought Israel closer to the west, but further away from the rest of the world
17 Nov 2023 12:25
Israel’s Solution to the Gaza Problem is an opportunist attempt to divide the world even more at a time when it needs unity more than ever. It aids Putin’s effort to do the same and gives him the chance to seize the moral high ground. Its logical conclusion is unthinkable, and the worst outcome for the future of the state of Israel imaginable.
Like Sunak’s 1984 Bill, it is completely unsustainable
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘What if no flights to Rwanda did take off before the election? Simples. We’d just pass a new law saying that the flights that hadn’t taken off had taken off after all. Then no one would be able to say the government had broken its promise.’

James Cleverly lines up with post-truth brigade on Rwanda shambles | John Crace
From theguardian.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.’ – O’Brien to Winston ‘1984’.
‘I will introduce emergency legislation which will enable parliament to confirm that Rwanda is safe.’ – Rishi Sunak to Parliament 2023.

No 10 says it will produce ‘emergency’ bill to show Rwanda safe country ‘in coming weeks’ – as it happened
16 Nov 2023 15:17
‘Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.’
O’Brien to Winston ‘1984’
‘I will introduce emergency legislation which will enable parliament to confirm that Rwanda is safe.’
Rishi Sunak to Parliament 2023.
View discussion

No 10 says it will produce ‘emergency’ bill to show Rwanda safe country ‘in coming weeks’ – as it happened
16 Nov 2023 12:01
Sorry, but this is not about poxy Rwanda anymore. Or any particular policy.
Yesterday, Sunak promised to give the House of Commons the power to define truth.
That threatens all our rights and freedoms.
When is the first Mega-Demonstration against this 1984 police state? Which will make last Saturday’s march look like a Boy Scout ramble.
View discussion

Jess Phillips quits Labour frontbench as Keir Starmer suffers major rebellion over Gaza ceasefire – UK politics as it happened
15 Nov 2023 16:51
Did Sunak just announce a police state where he gets to decide which countries are safe, and which way is up?
Did I just wake up from an Orwellian nightmare?
Or just enter one?
View discussion

Jess Phillips quits Labour frontbench as Keir Starmer suffers major rebellion over Gaza ceasefire – UK politics as it happened
15 Nov 2023 16:44
In response to Hurling
All due thingy, but where you bin?
November 2016 The Mail branded judges ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE
For making another British government obey British law.
View discussion

Jess Phillips quits Labour frontbench as Keir Starmer suffers major rebellion over Gaza ceasefire – UK politics as it happened
15 Nov 2023 16:39
In response to kalioon
And up is down.
And white is black.
And 2+2=5
View discussion

Jess Phillips quits Labour frontbench as Keir Starmer suffers major rebellion over Gaza ceasefire – UK politics as it happened
15 Nov 2023 16:19
The good-old Good Friday Agreement requires Britain’s membership of the UCHR. No?
If Sunak tears up one treaty to appease his NatC wolfpack, he tears up both, and revives an ancient cycle of horrors.
When things go wrong with deathbed capitalism, boy do they go wrong.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
No pack of scurvy politicians can turn black to white or up to down.
Rwanda is a toxic dictatorship which kills and tortures political opponents and refugees, and peddles refugees back to their former torturers and executioners..
No vote in parliament can change the facts.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
He wants the power to say up is down. 2+2=5. The works. The Lords will block it. And the good old Good Friday Agreement means we have to be in the UCHR, no? A whole new old nightmare. Hasn’t thought this one through.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Sunak just announced a police state. He gets to decide where’s safe and what 2+2 equals.
Did he tell the boys in Stormont?
We are in so much shit.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The good-old Good Friday Agreement requires Britain’s membership of the UCHR. No?
If Sunak tears up one treaty to appease his NatC wolfpack, he tears up both, and revives an ancient cycle of horrors.
When things go wrong with deathbed capitalism, boy do they go wrong.

Jess Phillips quits Labour frontbench as Keir Starmer suffers major rebellion over Gaza ceasefire – UK politics as it happened
15 Nov 2023 12:58
It begins.
30p Lee is already waving the NatC anarchist flag.
Torch all Laws Ideas and Conventions.
View discussion

Jess Phillips quits Labour frontbench as Keir Starmer suffers major rebellion over Gaza ceasefire – UK politics as it happened
15 Nov 2023 11:38
‘COME FOR SUELLA AND YOU COME FOR US ALL!’
Frothed the Mail before the Doberman chaining.
Now they will come for the lawyers, and even the law itself.
In true deluded Banana Republic style, Sunak is already claiming this as a victory – if only there were any civilised countries willing to collude in Britain’s People-Trafficking Scam.
view discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Not a ‘significant’ at all. In fact, a microscopic mini-splinter. And what did Corbyn say on Saturday anyway? This was typical of the day.

GAZA ARMISTICE MARCH
From flickr.com

Whether sacked or not, Suella Braverman could stir up a new Tory civil war
12 Nov 2023 16:39
In response to SilentCycling
When those who support them take to the streets they are not ‘protestors’, they are lynch-mobs.
As the typical cases of cowardly evening attacks last night reaffirmed.
View discussion

Whether sacked or not, Suella Braverman could stir up a new Tory civil war
12 Nov 2023 16:21
Sunak’s false equivalence of the desecration of the cenotaph ceremony and random racial violence by roaming packs of NatC thugs with a handful of people daring to wear the colour green or use the word ‘freedom’ was one of the most disgusting instances a political equivocation since Trump’s defence of the NatC murderers at Charlottesville.
View discussion

Whether sacked or not, Suella Braverman could stir up a new Tory civil war
12 Nov 2023 16:12
If yesterday’s march had been banned somehow, it would only have been reincarnated as a much bigger and wider protest against the suppression of ancient, sacrosanct freedoms.
Because of the breadth of this new movement, it would naturally include Pro-Palestinian groups, and so would also have to be banned.
Banning demonstrations calling for an armistice on Armistice Day is a slippery slope to banning all protest. Including the right to protest.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
They are people protesting for an armistice on Armistice Day, and who understandably didn’t want Braverman, or any of your vigilante thugs, to see their faces.

Police hunt for four men over ‘racially aggravated altercation’
From dailymail.co.uk

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How about Einstein? He warned that Netanyahu’s brand of Zionism would lead to fascism.
Was Einstein racist too?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Garbage. Nobody ‘incited’ for anything on any of the pro-peace marches, except a ceasefire.
The hatemonger in chief was Braverman, who should be prosecuted by @GoodLawProject for incitement to civil unrest.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How do babies on incubators and cancer patients ethnically cleanse themselves to safety? Especially when even the relatively fit get bombed on the roads?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The BBC gets round that with Shakespeare…
‘Get thee glass eyes; And like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not.’
Wil on Braverman.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You and Mad Netanyahu may relish your Final Solution. But as history shows, they never work for anyone. If Netanyahu and his crazed crew get their way, Israel’s future is one of permanent war.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Meanwhile, Netanyahu is holding 2.2 Million people hostage. And committing the monstrous global blunder of normalising collective punishment.
An act of insanity which will keep MI6 and the CIA overworked for generations.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Poppy Sellers may not be at risk, but the entire Remembrance tradition is.
For years it has been hijacked by Blimps to glorify war and recruit another generation of gullible unemployed to lay down their lives defending the privileges of their paymasters.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Sacked for refusing to be completely silenced and censored on all platforms. Not for anything in her show. Shame on the BBC.

Carol Vorderman leaves BBC radio show over social media guidelines
From independent.co.uk

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox @carolvorders
REFUSING TO BE CENSORED.
“I’m not prepared to lose my voice on social media, change who I am, or lose the ability to express the strong beliefs I hold about the political turmoil this country finds itself in”.
More guts than all the hacks at the Scum put together.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
If the Pro-Peace Marches are banned, the Pro-Freedom of Speech marches which will follow will be ten times the size, and will be justifiably angry.
You are lying yourself into a straight-jacket.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Einstein predicted that Netanyahu’s brand of Zionism would end up turning into fascism. Now tell me that Einstein was racist.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You’re obviously blind to the obvious parallel. Whether wilfully or no is your problem. But either way, you’re in denial of the fascist collective punishment being delivered on innocent Human Beings. The only motivation of your creed is Hate. It is therefore is doomed to fail.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
“The attacks are clearly indiscriminate, disproportionate and violate the principle of precaution. One cannot bomb hospitals hosting hundreds of patients and sheltering thousands of refugees. ..This is criminal.”

Israel’s attempt to destroy Hamas will breed more radicalisation, UN expert says
From theguardian.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Come along and find out what you’re dealing with for once.
Ask these people if they feel ‘comfortable’ with Braverman’s Hate-War..

Image

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israel is holding 2.3 million civilians hostage. While threatening them with nuclear extermination. There is no escape anywhere.
Israel will be brought to justice for its genocidal ethnic cleansing. 

Israeli minister says dropping nuclear bomb on Gaza ‘an option’, Netanyahu reacts
 From indiatoday.in

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How DARE you ask for an end to war on Armistice Day!!!

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The first effect of overwhelming obscenity is crippling incoherence.
Words are simply not enough to deal with this 24/7 sewer society.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
It comes from Netanyahu’s blatant and explicit NORMALISATION of Collective Punishment.
If it’s bad enough for Gazans, it’s bad enough for anyone.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
So called ‘right-wing’ thought has always opposed liberty – except the freedom to pillage and exploit at will.
The equality implicit in Liberty contradicts its entire superstition-base.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
They’re more insidious than that. The objective is to so pervert language that free thought becomes impossible. Especially thoughts about freedom.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
There is only one form of racism. That’s the point.
Nobody gets to claim they have priority over any other group.
‘Anti-semitism’ is now merely a ‘Humanist Shield’ for neo-fascist politicians to hide behind.
An attempt to undermine Anti-Racism, not an assertion of equality.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
One person shouting. Anything else?
How does that compare to thousands of children killed in a few weeks?
2.3 Million people imprisoned and besieged for generations?
Hiding your head in the sand won’t save Israel.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Perhaps you should wake up to the history of the last 70 years before trying to sound clever.
Netanyahu has normalised collective punishment on a global scale, and is attempting to mobilise the diaspora and divide the world.
The most dangerous man on earth. 

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
They are trying to pervert language to their purposes.
A universal call for freedom becomes Heresy – depending on who uses the words, making FREE thought impossible.
Do the words: ‘From Sea to Shining Sea Black people will be Free!’ mean the extermination of white people?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You know nothing of what happened. Your lies don’t match up to the facts. The only ‘HATE’ having any effect is your hate for human life and freedom. Netanyahu’s normalisation of nazi collective punishment is a green light to psychopaths everywhere.

Image

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox 
In the face of the obscene, disproportionate collective-punishment being inflicted on Gazan civilians, this is classic, pure Virtue Signalling.
The cynical militarisation of a tragedy. Proof you couldn’t care less about the victims of Hamas.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Those seeking freedom only ‘hate’ their guards.
Braverman is seeking to destroy freedom of expression.
Don’t come crying when she criminalises you.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You may be unconscious, but the world WOKE up to your barbarism years ago.
Your troglodyte death-cult is fleeing in terror from Science.
Especially CLIMATE SCIENCE.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
What if even ultra-orthodox Jews oppose Israel’s vengeance policy?

Image

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
No ideology based on fear and ignorance can be rational.
Therefore the concept of ‘right-wing thought’ is a fallacy.
An insult to logic.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The unification of the warring tribes of England took another century. And was not ‘nationalism’, just the colonial expansion of feudal England. True ‘nationhood’ had to wait until the consummation of ‘Great Britain’, when the money-classes won. Henry V’s legacy was a civil war.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israel is not ‘defending itself’, it is wreaking primitive collective punishment on a desperate people. And by normalising these neo-fascist tactics, gives a green light to psychopaths of all varieties.
The result will be the permanent state of war Zionism needs to thrive.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How about this line of poetry.
‘From Sea to Shining Sea
Black People will be Free.’
Who does that seek to exterminate?
Why do you want to deny Palestinians access to the River Jordan and the Mediterranean?
That is a historical first.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Here we go again. Johnson didn’t INTEND to lie. Trump didn’t INTEND to incite a coup. Bombs speak louder than words. And clearer.
What was Krystallnacht other than collective punishment for an assassination?
You’d think history would penetrate more.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Only last night I stumbled across the Lidice atrocity in occupied Czechoslovakia.
The definition of Collective Punishment. (Sippenhaftung).

Lidice: The Annihilation of a Czech Town
From encyclopedia.ushmm.org

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The most devout Jews seem to believe that the ‘nation state’ is just a modern vanity, and the enemy of faith. Like cars to the Amish.
Given the blood-stained record of nationalism in the last 100 years, who can argue?

Image

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You talk of ‘invading Gaza and dismantling Hamas’ as if it were replacing a dud battery in your remote-control. Boy are you in for a shock.
If you have your way, in 2 weeks you will be cowering in shame at the obscene death-toll you are sanctioning now. Remember Vietnam. Iraq.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How very comfortable. How many more thousand innocent lives are you prepared to waste in your futile nationalistic purification?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘FR0M SEA TO SHINING SEA – BLACK PEOPLE SHALL BE FREE!’
Where’s the implication of ‘extermination’ there?
‘From the River to the Sea’ is merely geography and history at the service of poetry.
The Middle East war was always about WATER RIGHTS. It’s the reason Jerusalem exists

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
What would you prefer they chant?
‘From the military check-point to military check-point,
Palestinians Shall be Free!’ ?
‘Freedom From Fence to Fence!’ ?
Israel is never going to achieve its stated objectives. It will only make more enemies by them.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
That’s what it was MEANT to come to. A Mega-Brexit Splitter issue. Just when we need global unity to act in SELF DEFENCE.
Simon, you fell in the nationalist trap & it took your lit-crit faculties with you.
The land between the river & the sea was home to millions. It was stolen.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
They are all psychopathic rages.
What hacks like Hitchins won’t address are the CAUSES of the epidemic of psychopathic behaviour, because they know they totally undermines their lifelong commitment to the only suspect in town, all-conquering consumerism.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You’re insane. That’s your context.
No literate person since the C18th has judged any action in isolation. That’s what being RATIONAL means. Cause & Effect in that order. And why the word EVIL is just a medieval theological relic.
Psychopaths are made by their lives, not Satan.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israelis hate neo-fascist worshipping Netanyahu.

Why Benjamin Netanyahu Loves the European Far-Right
From foreignpolicy.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Garbage. There is only one form of racism. All lives are equally valuable. Netanyahu has normalised racist collective punishment by his gross actions against innocent Gazans. Blame him for your fear. His objective is to split world opinion and save his squalid political hide.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israel has been holding 2.2 million people hostage since 2017.
Since 1967 really. How does that ‘factor-in’? What would that do to generations of young minds?
Gaza has been called the biggest prison. It is also the biggest petri-dish.
An experiment to test the Human breaking-point

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Shown sorrow for their dead for a respectable time before issuing red-mist threats of genocide and ethnic cleansing. That’s what.
As much as anything it would have given time for the horrors to sink in before they were swamped by the Gazan bodycount.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
When did you do a headcount? Who told you that the global diaspora was in favour of ethnic cleansing?

Neturei Karta (NK) And Masar Badil In Ottawa: “Free, Free Palestine From The River To The Sea”|…
From countercurrents.org

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You mean TRUE. Israel is using one genocide to justify another. It is assuming the role of Hadrian in the Bar Khokba revolt. It is holding 2.2 million people hostage.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Name 3. There isn’t an atrocity in history that wouldn’t have gained more sympathy had the victims shown sorrow for a while, rather than sworn immediate bloodthirsty revenge.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
NatC Euthanasia policy.. “deputy mayor: Best thing for disabled children is the guillotine”
mirror.co.uk
Tory deputy mayor: Best thing for disabled children is the guillotine
The retired GP made his sick suggestion to fellow councillors as they discussed sending the youngsters to a £3,000-a-week care home

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How about taking a tip from these guys and suggest a NO-State solution. A Site of Unique Spiritual and Historic Significance, administered and very generously funded by the UN.

Naturei Kharta
From flickr.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How do you ‘ensure Hamas is destroyed’? It’s a Red Mist Fantasy. Israel is merely endangering everyone – on whatever side and none – by its NORMALISATION of COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT. A giant historic mistake – again.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
This WAR is the result of 70 years of fascist oppression. Don’t try and say it surprised you. Decades of ethnic cleansing. And now Netanyahu’s Final Solution. 

Infographic: The Growth Of Israeli Settlements
From statista.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
70 years of Zionist ethnic cleansing, and a promised genocidal Final Solution of the Gaza Problem is the ongoing atrocity of deathbed Capitalism.
Einstein was right. Netanyahu’s brand of Zionism is fascist.

Rishi Sunak, decorated hero of the war on motorists, is no match for a real-world conflict
20 Oct 2023 13:21
I am half expecting a Conservative to blame the results on Putin’s invasion of motoring, or woke boats.
NatC blame-targets:
1) BBC.
2) Lawyers.
3) Civil Service.
4) International Law.
5) Bank of England.
6) Un-consummated Brexit.
7) The Parents.
8) The Kids.
9) The Welfare State.
10) Generations of wall-to wall socialist propaganda.
11) Vegetarians.
11) Foreigners.
The list is endless.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Sunak’s Covid startup fund invested nearly £2m in firms linked to his wife

Sunak’s Covid startup fund invested nearly £2m in firms linked to his wife
From theguardian.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How SHOULD they resist? By letting Israel occupy their lands, and be content to clean their pools & toilets?
‘Hunt down’ who? 1500 Gazan children butchered by Israel in a week?
The millions evicted into a parched wasteland for over 70 years?
Einstein was right. Zionism = Fascism.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Whoever hit it, at over 1000 uncoordinated strikes per day, it was only a matter of time before the IDF did hit it. As it has hit every ‘safe’ place in Gaza.
They’ll probably hit it again.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘Evil’ is such an obsolete, theological term.
‘Psychopath’ is the rational way to explain the effects of mass brutalisation.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Not the point. They are the only source. So they have to be quoted. When Israel makes a claim, it is served up plain, with the disclaimer: “according to Israeli sources.”
In fact, on balance, Israel’s version is challenged least.
Partly because it’s often breathtakingly absurd.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Garbage. What you mean is that the BBC has been driven more by the Human story, than by your land-grabbing colonialism.
Netanyahu’s genocidal Final Solution to the Gaza problem has wasted global sympathy, and normalised Sippenhaftung attacks on Jews everywhere.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Netanyahu endangered everyone a week ago when he normalised Collective Punishment in pursuit of his Final Solution.
The S.S. had a word for it: ‘Sippenhaftung’.
Look it up.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Meanwhile, the McCarthyism machine revs up.

US CEOs urge Harvard to name students in groups behind letter blaming Israel for Hamas attacks
From theguardian.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Since you give the IDF benefit of the doubt, and apparently accept their claims of 100% accuracy, how is it possible for all Gazan casualties to be the work of Hamas? Whether by false-flag or accident. The Israeli pronouncements get weirder by the day.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Nothing ‘hypothetical’ about the 1,000 attacks per day. Far too many to individually authorise. Or about the 1000 children killed so far. What do they say about IDF ‘accuracy’? Or the contradictory IDF excuse of ‘collateral damage’
Which is it? Or are the children HAMAS agents?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israel HAS already bombed hospitals, schools, and refugee convoys with ‘Extreme ‘Perfidy’.
Until last night the big story was the deaths caused by Israeli bombing refugees in Rafah.
Since they claim 100% accuracy, the attacks must have been deliberate.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Evidence? Thought not. Sippenhaft or #Sippenhaftung was the Nazi term for the idea that a family or clan shares the responsibility for a crime or act committed by one of its members, justifying collective punishment across the Reich.
That’s Israel in Gaza, that is.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You’re not still in a prison. Along with all your ancestors since 1948. You haven’t spent decades under an apartheid regime.
You would have approved of the Czarist pogroms of casual Jewish settlements on Russian soil. Next sick fake question.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How many million did this psychopath threaten to kill?
Netanyahu is about to kill 2.2 million, one way or another. He has made his Final Solution clear. More Lebensraum in a Greater Israel – whatever the cost. He is the supreme terrorist and war-criminal.
Or #EndTimer loony.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
She’s itching to declare Martial Law.
Like the British Governor would have done in the Old Country, if the natives had got stroppy..

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
1. Nowhere is it written that atrocities have to be planned.
2. It doesn’t matter anyway. Murder is the universal defining act of the psychopath. And there are many psychopaths involved in this conflict, and in power everywhere.
You should be asking WHY?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Your rabid normalisation of collective punishment has endangered millions of Jewish and Muslim lives all over the world. Israel has set the standard for genocidal ethnic-cleansing & medieval siege tactics.
Its Final Solution will enflame extremism everywhere.
I hope you’re happy.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
NO evidence? You crazy. Only first-hand evidence from every responsible, humane organisation on Earth. Your brain is fried by squalid nationalism. The poison of the world.
You’ll be denying Global warming next. You’re all the same disease.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How many tory MPs reacted PROPORTIONATELY to Israel’s Final Solution? To its genocidal mass ethnic cleansing? None of them give a damn. The triumph of rabid nationalism over democracy – and Humanity.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
There is only one form of racism. There is no Hierarchy.
If you can prove Corbyn is racist, feel free.
Nobody has so far.

Rob Kenyon
Biginabox
The global future will be determined by how much we want to survive as a species and how much we’re prepared to cooperate rather than fight.
As for The Holy Land, it has to be a UN site of unique spiritual significance, and taken away from grubby politicians.
Water for all

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Maybe now people will start taking these people seriously.
@NetureiKarta
Their answer seems to be a NO State solution, based on the mutual sanctity of the Holy Land to all Abramic faiths. Who could argue with that?

Naturei Kharta
From flickr.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The ‘nation state’ is basically a vulgar C19th invention anyway. One which has a proven record of total catastrophe. Not a divine creation.

Naturei Khurta. Jews against Zionism
From flickr.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
It amounts to collective Psychopathic behaviour, like Netanyahu’s biblical obsession, Putin’s megalomania, and Johnson & Trump’s Gangsterism. Bi-products of competitive consumerism, the ultimate war-machine and scientifically proven destroyer of worlds.

1 in 5 business leaders may have psychopathic tendencies—here’s why, according to a psychology…
From cnbc.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
As usual you ‘understand’ nothing in your mad rush to crush every freedom you see. You ‘understand’ selling children to tinpot dictatorships as a ‘humane’ act.
Your British Empire Re-enactment Society brutality is a disgusting attempt to imitate your colonial masters in Africa.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
What else is a Psychopath but a powerless individual pushed too far? And what better system for spawning them than the Utopia we live in?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
They’re all Psychopaths. Universally, they are the result of ‘resentments boiling over’. Resentments directly caused by the toxic dog-eat-dog Utopia we’re told we enjoy. Which sparks Water Wars – as in Palestine for milenia. Global Warming won’t help.

1 in 5 business leaders may have psychopathic tendencies—here’s why, according to a psychology…
From cnbc.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
If Israel had not seen the red mist, and shown its archaic biblical ethos, the gates of every city in the world would have been blue and white. But Netanyahu had to have his pound of flesh. Which has directly endangered every Jew and Muslim on earth.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
@shahidkamal
‘To my dismay, I see hatred and demonisation of all Muslims from the highest levels, from media figures, politicians and even entertainers. My wife is threatened on the streets by strangers. The double standards on display are an outrage. We don’t feel safe here.’

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Netanyahu’s Normalisation of collective punishment at work. The Zionist agenda is to create a wedge issue to make Brexit look like a pub tug-of-war, and fuel the fantasies of the EndTimers, who will be all over this like Truffaut on Hitchcock. This has ALWAYS been about WATER.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox 
‘Policy’? What influence do you think Westminster has on the way the world does business, and that your ‘agency’ counts. You’re assuming that the politics is at the reins of the carriage. It is merely the horse. If not, anti-CO2 economics would have been implemeted 30 years ago.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
How much ‘agency’ do you have? In anything except a vote every 5 years, if lucky. When did you last have to make an instant, do or die decision which could mean life or death for your family? How many generations of it have been denied basic human rights and freedoms?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The whole world shares the same fossil-based addiction to power. And everyone knows the prognosis for that, and so they retreat into anti-rational nationalism. Like any patient after a terminal diagnosis. So there is no solution in ‘nations’. They are all a fabrication

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
If we dared to look, we would see that the crimes are essential to the way we live. The same one which has always caused wars and which is now also torching the environment. So we have to stay blind – or abandon our consumerist identity. Like asking the addict to go cold turkey.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Why should they have accepted it? And how does that in any way justify Netanyahu’s Final Solution, with its normalisation of genocidal ethnic cleansing and collective punishment? Don’t you realise what that means?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Declare Martial Law in Britain. That’s what happens when collective punishment is normalised.
Netanyahu is mad.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
They go back to square one and behave like human beings, not imperial colonists.
But it may be too late after today.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
None of those countries announced an intention to commit genocidal mass ethnic-cleansing on a biblical scale. Netanyahu has. Much to the despair of many Jews who see the terrible danger in normalising collective punishment.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Garbage. By normalising collective punishment in Gaza, Zionism has endangered every Jew on Earth. An entire new generation of psychopaths is bred by a criminal Prime Minister.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
It’s all become a lot less complicated now that Netanyahu has normalised (and globalised) collective punishment. But not for the better. Einstein’s predictions have been proven true. Israel has become the thing that created it.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Treating Palestinians with RESPECT.
That would help make Israel more secure.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Because its Final Solution in Gaza is not only illegal but suicidal. By normalising collective punishment, he has given a green light to every psychopath looking for a target. After today, the voices in many heads will be urging revenge.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
All a bit parish-pump now that Netanyahu has normalised collective punishment. He obviously doesn’t realise what that means, and neither do his arse-kissers in the British media.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
A crazed normalisation of collective punishment on a biblical scale.
Netanyahu has created a terrible precedent, and put the lives of thousands of Jews everywhere at great risk.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
If the game is ‘An Eye for an Eye, a Baby for a Baby’, Netanyahu has far more choice. But he needn’t bother. Disease and starvation will kill more than bombs. He just needs to sit and wait for his final solution to deliver his Greater Israel, like Hadrian outside Bethar.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox 
Netanyahu has set the precedent. Collective punishment is now the norm. Doesn’t he realise what that means for the global Jewish population?
Today’s barbaric extermination edict is ‘historic’.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
I get the feeling I just heard the giant jaws of a silent trap slam shut on Israel’s future.
This time they have gone too far.
They have fulfilled Einstein’s prediction, and become the thing they professed to hate most.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Netanyahu is managing to make enemies for Israel by himself. He doesn’t need any help. With friends like him, who needs enemies?
He should know from the seige of Bethar in 135AD that Final Solutions are always the worst.
His genocidal policy of ethnic cleansing won’t work either

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Which ‘someones’ are these?
Fact. Hamas is holding 150 hostages. Netanyahu is holding 2.2 MILLION. And threatening biblical vengeance in the style of Emperor Hadrian.
‘Shrug your shoulders’ at that.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
‘Better jaw-jaw than war-war’ Who said that?
Ian Paisley talked to Gerry Adams. The result is a peace which the NatCs now want to destroy.
Just as Braverman is itching to declare Martial Law.
War is their natural habitat.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Like Lt Calley, you mean?
Don’t start an atrocity-battle you can’t possibly win.
@elhaaretz
blames the ‘government of annexation and dispossession’ with ‘a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians’

Editorial | Netanyahu bears responsibility
From haaretz.com

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Biq questions? You want big questions? And water?
Israel is a project to dominate regional water rights.
Since Joshua conquered Jericho.

Climate Diplomacy Logo

climate-diplomacy.org
Israel-Palestine: Water Sharing Conflict
Water sharing issues form an important part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The 1990s in particular witnessed extensive efforts to reach a peace agreement and to cooperate on water sharing…

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
So your golden age was the great depression. Breeding ground of international fascism. With no healthcare and mass rickets. Is that on your election manifesto?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Extremism does not discredit diversity. In fact, the latter moderates the former. Only extremists provoke extreme reactions. You and your NatCs are the only extremists with political power. Used to peddle hate and glorify war.
And you’ve got what you wanted. A world at war.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
In Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf, he attributes to H in the bunker the saying:
‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end.’
And its power in certain circumstances.
After 70 years of war, Palestinians obviously also feel they have nothing left to lose. https://panarchy.org/orwell/meinkampf.html…

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
You don’t seriously expect Israel to cease fire if that happened. It is now playing the part of Hadrian in the The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD). From David to Goliath in 3000 years.
Einstein warned of an Israel run by Ultra-nationalists. Exactly the same ones now in control.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
The most obvious way to guarantee Netanyahu’s genocidal programme of ethnic cleansing would be for Hamas to surrender its only bargaining chips. Israel has shown its hand and fallen into the trap. There is no going back now. Palestinians have nothing more to lose. See Vietnam.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
If you had a brain not a microchip, you would have absorbed some history of the last 70 years
The unjustifiable record of the Zionist blitzkrieg on the Palestinian untermensch to seize more lebensraum. Now it plans genocide and ethnic cleansing, and NatC thugs like you applaud it

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Yesterday’s assertion was that the Gaza action was unjustifiable. Fair enough. By the same reasoning, what justifies the 70 year history of Israeli occupation?

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Collective punishment it is. I don’t remember the German for it, but in effect, Natanhayu’s total siege and total bombardment amount to a massive war-crime on a biblical scale. A repetition of Bar Kokhba (135 CE), in fact. Only then, the Judeans were the victims.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Since when did Labour represent your favourite brand of socialism? The unions would never let them. Labour is the party of reassuring managerialism. That’s how it wins elections. Not by promising to abolish money – or by prioritising micro-identities before Class Identity.

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israeli announces total genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza to provide more ‘Living Room’
As if not enough Palestinians had been killed.

Infographic: The Human Cost Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
From statista.com

In the midst of war, Benjamin Netanyahu is a liability who can only make things worse. He must go
9 Oct 2023 15:57
In response to Trevor48
Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing would finally win the argument, true.
But not the one it has been making for 70 years.
It may make some progress in its own interest when it finally realises that not only has it been at war its entire existence, but is itself a state of war, by design and implementation, founded on division and mistrust, like all synthetic nationalisms.
View discussion 

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox 
Since when is the Hamas ‘charter’ the Quran? You’ll be claiming the Spanish Inquisition was ‘Christian’ next. Hamas are ultra-nationalists. Direct relatives of Zionists, UKIP and the NatCs now in the British Cabinet. 

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israel has violated 28 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council (which are legally binding on member-nations U.N.. And condemned by UNHCR scores of times. Any arrests?

Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert
From ohchr.org

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Guilotinining disabled children to save money would ‘work’. But only a NatC tory barbarian would ever dream of doing it. Same principle with selling children to tinpot dictatorships who shoot protesting refugees.

Tory deputy mayor: Best thing for disabled children is the guillotine.
From mirror.co.uk

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
Israel will never be secure until it realises it is not only at war, but is itself a state of war, against the Palestinian people since 1948. Since Israel is invulnerable to countless UN resolutions, what else do the Palestinians have to lose? The world has abandon them.

Covid is evolving – but the UK is not doing enough to evolve with it
7 Oct 2023 16:15
In response to Stechriswillgil
For your information, Putin already declared the Global Carbon War – on 24th February 2022.
He doesn’t care what happens to Humanity. Like all Carbonists, his only concern is power.
Any individual aware of the realities would change their behaviour ‘overnight’.
But essentially, the choice is between a cooperative sustainable future and ecological catastrophe driven by obsolete, toxic, competitive consumerism.
The reduction in personal consumption of useless junk would be radical. But radical changes are needed.
View discussion

Covid is evolving – but the UK is not doing enough to evolve with it
7 Oct 2023 13:51
In response to Stechriswillgil
The ‘bigger picture’ is that zoonotic pathogens like Covid19, Ebola and Avian influenza are caused by our actions, many of which are the same that drive global warming.
Both global disasters fired by the same toxic, carbon-fuelled, junkie-consumerism we are addicted to.
The solution must be obvious, surely?
View discussion

Covid is evolving – but the UK is not doing enough to evolve with it
7 Oct 2023 13:43
In response to Uriel79
Politically bankrupt despots always claim credit for successes they are not responsible for.
Johnson had nothing to do with the development of the vaccines.
View discussion

Sunak smiled as he cancelled our hopes for HS2. Northern voters will remember this betrayal
6 Oct 2023 11:54
In response to movedtoran
And freight?
Would HS2 be just as pointless for moving goods as for moving people?
We’ll never know, because Sunak’s sabotage has cursed forever any prospect of the kind of fast freight infrastructure our competitors take for granted.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon
@Biginabox
It’s bizarre that we have a Green Party that won’t admit it’s really socialist, and a Labour Party that won’t admit it’s really Green. Their interests are identical. The sooner they get a room the better. And if they want to get adventurous, ask the Christians in too.

Damian Penaud leads eight-try rout of Italy as France confirm progress in style
7 Oct 2023 12:39
That time-freezing kick from Jalibert was almost harmonically pitch perfect.
An audio sine-wave the same semi-circular shape would produce a pure Pythagorean note of some kind.
Pretty.
View discussion

Sunak smiled as he cancelled our hopes for HS2. Northern voters will remember this betrayal
6 Oct 2023 11:54
In response to movedtorant
And freight?
Would HS2 be just as pointless for moving goods as for moving people?
We’ll never know, because Sunak’s sabotage has cursed forever any prospect of the kind of fast freight infrastructure our competitors take for granted.
View discussion

Sunak smiled as he cancelled our hopes for HS2. Northern voters will remember this betrayal
6 Oct 2023 11:50
Sunak has effectively made it impossible for a modern High speed rail link north of Birmingham for the foreseeable future.
A typical act of tory sabotage equivalent to the Romans salting the earth around Carthage.
All Labour’s promises were rewritten by the Truss crash, but this puts the tin hat on them.
The objective now is apparently to completely destroy the economy, infrastructure and business confidence in order to cripple the incoming Labour administration.
Perhaps last night’s bi-election result reveals a new public reluctance to be fooled. If the public is also forewarned, they might be prepared for the effort needed to repair the damage of the last 13 years.
View discussion

Rishi Sunak’s speech showed what’s next for the Tories – and it isn’t him
4 Oct 2023 20:314
In response to Ex_Brit
How else do you think change can happen?
The revenge of the mortgaged middle classes with kids at ‘uni’?
Their voluntary enslavement to the banks rules them out as activists in any collective movement.
View discussion

Rishi Sunak’s speech showed what’s next for the Tories – and it isn’t him
4 Oct 2023 20:26
‘Levelling-up’ always inherently and undeniably involved a degree of Equality in contradiction with basic tory values, driving them to doublethink.
The unshakeable orthodoxy of yesterday becomes the Heresy of today, and as such is now an Untruth, and in the Newspeak dictionary under ‘woke’, as is HS2 itself, and any other expression of Humane values and aspirations.
View discussion

Axing most winter fuel payments would break Tory manifesto promise, says Labour – as it happened
29 Sep 2023 11:11 In response to Toomuchrose
Every safety measure back to the Factories Act was greeted by mass howls of doom from the vested interests and identity-prisoners. All objections amounted in principle to total deregulation in the name of ‘freedom’.
This is just the latest.
View discussion

Axing most winter fuel payments would break Tory manifesto promise, says Labour – as it happened
29 Sep 2023 11:07
How many more blatant attacks on democracy will this flabby remains of a society tolerate before it decides to defend itself?
View discussion

Pygmalion review – Patsy Ferran and Bertie Carvel don’t find play’s heart
26 Sep 2023 19:58
I get Freddie doing Simpering Rishi Sunak, but why did Higgins talk like Bertie Wooster?
I could place him within a street of Crichton Mansions, Berkeley Street, W.
And Hertfordshire and Oxford (Magdalen via Eton).
View discussion

Suella Braverman criticised by Labour over ‘deeply divisive’ migration speech – as it happened
26 Sep 2023 12:39
In response to Cardigan32
Not really surprising for a descendant and admirer of the British colonial machine in East Africa.
View discussion

Suella Braverman criticised by Labour over ‘deeply divisive’ migration speech – as it happened
26 Sep 2023 12:28
Braverman tells another toxic thinktank that we should send women back to be stoned to death, send homosexuals back to be beheaded, send children back to be enslaved and trafficked.
That the bloated rich world should ‘update’ moral responsibility back to the Stone Age.
The anti-Human evil is only balanced by the evil perversion of language, the classic NatC inversion of meaning. Plus yet another implicit hysterical denial of the forthcoming consequences of Consumerist environmental sabotage and its apparently endless wars.
Classic ultra-nationalist bunker-mentality.
View discussion

Martin Rowson on the retirement of Rupert Murdoch – cartoon
22 Sep 2023 16:27
Until Murdoch and his ilk turned up, we were credibly living in the Information Age.
Now we live in the Disinformation Age.
Notice the difference?
If not, Murdoch’s work is complete.
View discussion

Inside the Tory climate soap opera this week: ‘The WhatsApp groups are a bloodbath’
21 Sep 2023 14:20
They’ll be dancing in the Kremlin tonight!
At a stroke, Sunak has ensured high Russian oil prices, signed up to Putin’s Doublethink Club, and crippled Britain’s future economy.
Sunak is final proof that we have moved from the Information Age to the Disinformation Age, where the biggest lie always beats the greatest ideal, however rational desirable and practicable.
The cost of not implementing Nett Zero will be twice that of implementing it.
But that’s for tomorrow to deal with.
After the election.
View discussion

The media need to cover the climate crisis as seriously as it covered Covid
20 Sep 2023 16:44
In response to Bleak_T_W
Slandering scientific projections is obviously great fun.
Until they are compared with the reality now.
The difference is appalling – to the denialists.
From the earliest serious report in 1973, up to 2013:
“Climate models published since 1973 have generally been quite skillful in projecting future warming. While some were too low and some too high, they all show outcomes reasonably close to what has actually occurred, especially when discrepancies between predicted and actual CO2 concentrations and other climate forcings are taken into account.”

Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?

View discussion

The media need to cover the climate crisis as seriously as it covered Covid
20 Sep 2023 15:33
The ecological movement needs to wake up to the fact that the war in Ukraine is not merely about borders, but a fight to the death between committed anti-science Carbonists, and a sustainable future.
Zero CO2 will never be achieved while Putinism rules in Russia.
View discussion

Without golden generation Wales are worlds away from World Cup success
4 Sep 2023 13:15
As an aid to betting:
Since its introduction, which national team has deployed the ’50-22′ kick most?
The team which wins this WC will be the one which does.
Betcha.
View discussion

Britain can recover from the self-harm of Brexit. Today’s return to the EU’s Horizon project shows how
7 Sep 2023 15:19. In response to Onepieceman
Germany has endured several recent traumas since unification, and prospered as Britain never could.
If Britain had been derived of its main energy source overnight, it would have crumpled like the house of cards it is. Instead, Germany has seized the opportunity to commit to renewable energy. While Britain still banned onshore wind and opened up new North Sea Poison Fields.
The same deformed, backward mentality which opposed Germen unification in order to maintain its advantage over Germany running on one leg.
View discussion

Macbeth review – a strenuously fresh reading with one-liners by Stewart Lee
1 Sep 2023 11:53
LittleRichardjohn
Guardian Pick
The Porter’s speech needs no butchering, just intelligent reading and a production which believes in the role.
That combination soon discovers the immense diversity of interpretation in the speech, culminating in possibly the most chilling 4th-wall breaker in the canon.
‘What Are You?’
A short Renaissance step from Montaigne’s motto: ‘What do I think?’, recently published in London, and which Shakespeare undoubtedly read or was aware of.
The theme of the ‘equivocation’ is central to darkest reaches of the play. And reflected the spy-ridden paranoia and double-think of Shakespeare’s time – and ours.
The Porter literally holds the key to the psychopathic world of Macbeth and his bereaved wife..
Far better to honestly admit defeat and cut the speech altogether than impose some bland attempt to wrench that terribly complicit middle-class Shakespeare-laugh from an audience.
View discussion

It’s Ulez day, and to those who would thwart it I say: people are dying, this will save lives
29 Aug 2023 11:27
In response to MeandYou
London, like the rest of the world, is totally debased by the junk economy you endorse. As irrefutably demonstrated by all the science you deny.
The poorest are already suffering most from your cult, and without ULEZ and many other even more radical measures, they will continue to be the guinea pigs of the consumerist experiment.
Which is all they deserve, according to you.
View discussion

It’s Ulez day, and to those who would thwart it I say: people are dying, this will save lives
29 Aug 2023 10:56
In response to FruityLoot
What attrition-rate do you think would be acceptable to drivers?
More or less than the road accident level?
Death numbers are irrelevant. We already know the long and short-term effects on the body. That’s all the evidence Human Reason should need.
The effects on the mind are almost as alarming.
View discussion

It’s Ulez day, and to those who would thwart it I say: people are dying, this will save lives
29 Aug 2023 10:49
In response to MeandYou
‘Let them Eat Junk’
‘Let them Breathe Poison’
If you can’t afford to live, go back where you came from.
The tumbrils are never far behind that kind of supreme arrogance.
View discussion

It’s Ulez day, and to those who would thwart it I say: people are dying, this will save lives
29 Aug 2023 10:45 In response to stamokap
For the squillionth time…
ULEZ is NOT Khan’s policy.
It is not even tory policy, it is tory LAW, endorsed by Johnson while trying to puff his PR at Glasgow COP.
View discussion

It’s Ulez day, and to those who would thwart it I say: people are dying, this will save lives
29 Aug 2023 10:41
In response to Freedomofspeecg
Your clients can blame the NatC government for refusing to provide the scrappage schemes they have funded elsewhere – especially in non-Labour cities.
The major revelation of ULEZ is the level of chronic car-addiction in London, and its effects on the psychology of the sufferers. Their willingness to poison their own children completely replicates the behaviour of drug-addicts who steal from their relatives and friends, or kill strangers to sustain their habit.
iew discussion

In response to Sommatini
Russia is a Methane explosion waiting to happen.
Putin’s power is based on finite resources, like all dictatorships.
In recent history Fossil Fuels = Political Power.
Climate science has undermined the sustainability of that equation, constructing a fatal competitor to Carbon Power in the shape of renewable technology, which Russia is incapable of providing under Putin. The battle is really to make renewable energy cheaper than Carbon. Which Putin’s ramshackle Russia can never win.
By weaponising Carbon, Putin has concentrated minds on the urgent need to re-power civilisation. And whether they know it or not, all members of the so-called anti-Putin alliance are, objectively, fighting for a Carbon-free world and against the inherently totalitarian power of Carbonism. And the sooner they realise it the better.
The Carbon dinosaurs like Saudi – and Russia – will go the way of Spain when the American gold ran out. All of it blown on vanity projects and posturing wars. None invested in creative industries.
View discussion

The Tories have become too pungent for a country that likes its politics plain
23 Aug 2023 12:20
‘Rage and division’ sounds like the perfect winning policy for a terminally enraged and divided society like Brexit Broken Britain.
The patient first has to admit he needs therapy.
View discussion

Let’s ditch the tired tropes about video games – and research their impact properly
21 Aug 2023 11:59
In response to hellopixel
‘Let’s ditch the tired tropes about video games’
Nope. Every definition of a ‘trope’ merely refers to real words which should be used instead.
‘a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression.’
‘a significant or recurrent theme; a motif.’
View discussion

Let’s ditch the tired tropes about video games – and research their impact properly
21 Aug 2023 11:55
In response to underthinker
I knew there was one I forgot.
The overall effect of this catch-all techno-jargon is not merely to inflate the authors bogus authority, but to reduce the number of words in usage and their wide spectrum of nuanced meanings. Thereby reducing the range of thought.
Just as in Newspeak.
View discussion

Let’s ditch the tired tropes about video games – and research their impact properly
21 Aug 2023 10:42
Before we do anything can we ditch pretentious pseudo-scientific wank-words like ‘trope’.
If you mean ‘category’ ‘theme’ ‘genre’ ‘myth’ or ‘lie’ just say so.
Use your critical intelligence to specify, and communicate your meaning, not your inflated slelf-image..
View discussion

Trump has no serious first amendment defense in a court of law. Here’s why
14 Aug 2023 23:16
If, as alleged in the Guardian, his team conspired to criminally defraud the Georgia electorate, they are guilty of Racketeering offences (Gangsterism).
Meaning no ‘5th Amendment’ tricks by Trump.
View discussion

The truth is Tory voters are onboard for net zero. What’s really worrying them is how we get there
10 Aug 2023 12:45
In response to Cropolite
It’s a sad joke.
Even among the Anti-Carbonist, pro-science community, there is still this absurd fantasy that wars can be won without widespread sacrifice shared equitably.
If Osborne’s ‘Austerity’ had been devoted to rescuing the climate rather than the billionaire bankers, and repeated the original post-war sacrifices, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.
Sustainability means the end of toxic consumerism, not its furtherance by even more layers of pointless technology.
Renewable energy is not intended to match, amp for amp, the obscene and ridiculous orgy of current consumption but to enable enough energy for our needs, not our sick addiction to acquisition.
A Bonfire of the Vanities is long overdue.
View discussion

The truth is Tory voters are onboard for net zero. What’s really worrying them is how we get there
10 Aug 2023 12:32
What’s ‘worrying them’ is the fact that the entire political and economic foundation of the consumerist personal ‘Identity’ has been scientifically trashed- over and over.
There is now no other existential threat other than the environmental devastation of the status quo. And so the obedient flock suffers a mass identity-crisis, and tends to reject Science rather than swallow its bitter conclusions.
When even the Secretary General of the UN proposes ‘radical global economic and political change’, lifelong tories should pay attention – and start using the word ‘radical’ in its true sense, and not as a way of conflating fanatical terrorism with genuine, vital activism.
View discussion

Sunak’s tweet associating Labour with ‘criminal gangs’ labelled ‘desperate and pathetic’ by shadow cabinet minister – UK politics live
25 Jul 2023 12:21
A truly black week for the environment, and children’s lungs in London.
While the NatCs gloat at Sunak and Starmer’s surrender to Carbonist threats and lies, so doe Putin.
Every withdrawal from ZeroCO2 feeds more cash into his war-chest.
Sunak is giving to Ukraine with one hand and to the Kremlin with two more.
The sooner the west realises exactly what is at stake in Ukraine, the sooner it will mobilise enough to defeat Russia’s Scorched Earth nihilism.
View discussion

Rayner attacks Tories over ‘mortgage bombshell’ as Sunak misses PMQs again – as it happened
12 Jul 2023 14:32
‘Jenrick said the murals were painted over because they were not “age appropriate”
Is that whey they also tore down the multi-lingual ‘Welcome’ messages?
Or was that because some of the intake couldn’t read, and might feel alienated??
View discussion

Robert Jenrick going to war with Mickey Mouse is no surprise – this government is anti-child to its core
11 Jul 2023 11:18
‘anti-child to its core’
A paedophobic government is the natural consequence of a paedophobic culture.
In Britain, children are widely treated as either status symbols or apprentice moneymakers. Their childhood is either ruthlessly exploited by commercial interests, or brutalised by a system of circus training intended to strip them of any sense of freedom or spontaneity, creating generations of alienated, baffled people with no affiliation to society, and just a hole where their Humanity should be.
The perfect obedient congregation for the industrial lies of adverting and the reactionary media.
View discussion

How we can teach children so they survive AI – and cope with whatever comes next
8 Jul 2023 12:37
‘little has been done to equip students for a world whose conditions shift so fast.’
Stuff the students. There is more than a primae-facae argument that A.I. will completely wipe out large sections of the white-collar middle-class economy at a stroke. A vast shift in the labour market and the exact opposite of what happened in the wake of the Black Death.
View discussion

Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature by John Vidal review – a frightening diagnosis
7 Jul 2023 18:59
Deforestation poses a double threat to Humanity from the destruction of the atmosphere and by spawning global diseases.
And the response? A double-dose of denialism to mask the horrible truth about death-bed capitalism. A mass futile stampede to defend an obsolete, toxic Identity in the face of its consequences.
View discussion

Keir Starmer has finally used the C-word: acknowledging the barriers of class that still divide us
6 Jul 2023 21:51
In response to MustyKankles
“Working class” means having the lowest credit rating – as it always has.
It is a measure of how little you are trusted by a bank manager.
A reflection of the fact that the only capital you have is your work – which is entirely dependent on your health.
You have nothing else to sell. No CAPITAL to underwrite credit.
View discussion

Keir Starmer has finally used the C-word: acknowledging the barriers of class that still divide us
6 Jul 2023 21:46
In response to MustyKankles
‘..in 2023, class can no-longer be used as a reliable descriptor of any one socio-economic group‘
Garbage.
Class has never been better defined. Check your credit-rating.
That is your ‘class’, perfectly calculated by computer.
The reality is the same. If your labour and silver plate provides your only credit via the pawnshop, you are working class.
If you have a delivery van of your own, you may have enough capital to get a bankloan to rent your first grocery shop, and become lower-middle class..
If you own a shop, you will get a bigger loan, and aspire to membership of the Rotary Club.
And so on.
The system hasn’t changed at all. It just got digitized into a kids computer game.
View discussion

Government says it will comply with high court ruling saying it must give Covid inquiry all documents it wants – as it happened
6 Jul 2023 12:57
In response to Booboyboo
Clearly there is a tendency to put personal inconvenience before Truth.
Or there would not be so many piffling objections to minor disruptions in daily routine – which are in fact merely a microscopic sampler of the major breakdown of infrastructure and society a few short decades away.
If you want a quiet life, the remedy is simple , mass Pester-Power of all MPs to pull their sticky fingers out now, before it’s too late. Or you don’t vote for them no more by golly! Then the protests would stop.
View discussion

The Guardian view on Toyota’s electric car battery: a boost only if we embrace public transport
5 Jul 2023 23:46
Sustainable technologies are not intended to prolong and sustain our current levels of obscene waste and over-production of Junk. That would merely serve to appease the unsustainable agendas of the Carbonist corporations and politicians that got us in this mess in the first place. A futile tail-chasing exercise which might be designed to fatally undermine any serious effort to reverse anthropogenic climate change.
Individual people-carriers are just one sacrifice we will eventually have to make. Life will need to be more frugal and communal than the world of TV commercials. As a result it will be healthier, as it was in 1948. The year the NHS was founded on the assumption that people would not be turned into experimental pate-geese by an industrialised orgy of toxic food and high-stress mindless toil. The result being an NHS in the same danger as the global environment, and for the same basic reason – that there is huge profit to be made by anyone who can seize control of it.
The war against climate disaster is impossible without defeating the toxic consumerism that causes it. It’s only everyday rational causation. Why does it make people so angry?
View discussion

Who’s for political Bazball with Rishi? Voters? Tories? Anyone?
4 Jul 2023 14:41
In response to SteamBuff
This is not a ‘game’ we’re talking about but competitive, professional sport (another misnomer).
Another case of ‘Where there’s Brass There’s Muck.’
“There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism – that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units & seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.
Orwell. The Sporting Spirit“
View discussion

Another deadly pandemic seems inevitable – but there is a way to avoid it
4 Jul 2023 11:27
Just stop destroying habitat to produce cheap burgers and the dynamo of zoonotic pathogens would splutter to a halt.
What is the problem with that?
Deforestation is a twin evil. A pincer movement to eradicate civilisation by destroying the atmosphere and by spawning deadly pandemics. A war on nature and humanity financed by the proceeds of the toxic Consumerism which runs the world.
Sorry, but There is No Alternative culprit anymore.
View discussion

The Partygate probe should have stopped at Johnson, and let his tinpot army fade into obscurity
29 Jun 2023 16:42
‘Petty’ my arse.
All it ‘risks’ is sticking by the rules every MP swore on the King James bible to uphold and respect.
America doesn’t have a system like this.
And look what happened to them.
The behaviour of the Terrible Ten would have got them thrown out of every club in St James. Not to mention the M.C.C. and the Masons. They have to learn to respect the judgement of their peers, and the rules they agree to when they join any association.
View discussion

Prigozhin couldn’t seal Putin’s fate. But here’s how all of us in the west still can
26 Jun 2023 21:52
In response to DandelionandMurdoch
Oversimplify and dodge the point.
The Oil giants have nothing but mineral reserves.
They have never used the revenue to create anything, just to buy gold Kharzis.
They are as doomed as the Spanish Hapsburg empire after the American gold ran out.
They will carry on destroying the ecosystem as long as they can because Oil = Political Power.. They represent the anti-scientific Carbonism touted by Trump & Co, but which the west is now committed to ending, and Putin has forced our hand by weaponising oil and gas.
When the West creates a technology which generates cheaper energy than fossil fuels, the Carbonist rule is over.
View discussion

Prigozhin couldn’t seal Putin’s fate. But here’s how all of us in the west still can
26 Jun 2023 21:43
Of course we’re all enlisted.
This is a total global war against those who would tear up every attempt to salvage civilisation from eco-disaster. Civilisation means something very different to a psychopathic dictator – there is none without him in charge of it. Putin has laready said that there is no point to a world without Russia.
H***ler in his bunker, writing his Nero Decrees, thought the same ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end.’
The sooner everyone from Biden to Zilenskiy realise what they are actually fighting for, the sooner we will all win. The stakes have never been higher.
View discussion

Why did it take a murderous war on Ukraine for Germany to wake up to the threat from Russia?
19 Jun 2023 13:45
Even during the Cold War, the doctrine was that trade with the USSR was the way to preserve peace.
In the anarchy after 1989, this relationship became even more essential, and Germany’s partnership a natural, vital and historically important contribution. Theory was that commerce would prevent another Putin. The same strategy used to deal with China.
Blaming Germany for becoming ‘dependent’ on Russian fossil fuels is a bit rich coming from British politicians who enabled the Londongrad Cash-o-Mat, and who are now threatening British energy self-sufficiency by shackling our economy to the defunct fossil-fuel trade, a cartel partly controlled by Putin and his Carbonist cronies.
View discussion

Profiteering? Not us, say Britain’s supermarkets, and the boss who earned £4.9m last year
9 Jun 2023 16:09
When every Mom’n’Pop operation on the High Street was locked down, the mega-chains must have thought all their dreams of glory had come true at once. And sure enough they cleaned up on the lack of competition in all product lines, not merely food and basics. They did this as thoroughly and profitably as the energy giants did, but suffered no similar windfall tax, in spite of directly putting the boot into many small businesses, at significant cost to the taxpayer.
What’s the score?
View discussion

End Times by Peter Turchin review – can we predict the collapse of societies?
7 Jun 2023 20:22
In ‘Civilisation’, Clark identifies a lack of ‘confidence’ as a key factor in the decline of ancient Rome.
There were later crises in European civilisation, but there was always ‘confidence’ in religion.
Now, we have no confidence in religion, but sheer certainty in the reality of global extinction within a few generations. This has created a global Identity Crisis on an unprecedented scale, with the irrational behaviour to match.
It is a unique point in human history and yet this hyper-technocrat doesn’t factor it in?
View discussion

An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals by Polly Toynbee review – the genes, the dreams
4 Jun 2023 23:45
In response to Fallowfield
Too many people still peddle the notion that socialism proposes a Perfect World.
It never has, just a better one.
And from our supreme viewpoint in History, the need for improvement is now undeniable, and more urgent than ever. Those whoeny that reality have always demied the possibility of improvemnt. But now they deny almost everything else.
They represent a new brand of Total Negativity, dedicated only to the last few hedonistic decades of human civilisation, because ‘better an end with horror than a horror without end’. Better that Humanity be sacrificed on the altar of Consumerism than it be allowed to find its original cooperative nature in a world without war.
View discussion

An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals by Polly Toynbee review – the genes, the dreams
4 Jun 2023 23:36
In response to Fallowfield
The Spanish experience had a huge effect on Orwell. It marked the time from when he dedicated his work to furthering ‘democratic socialism as he understood it.’ A position from which he never recanted in word or deed.
But even before Spain he felt the need to confront the prejudices he admitted, while never denying the evidence of his senses, even if they confirmed some of his prejudices. Confronting them involved a form of home-made immersion therapy in the smells and dirt which disgusted him. He was almost unique among British writers in both accepting his middle-class prejudice and privilege, and being willing to do hard penance for them, in spite of the damage he knew he was doing to his health.
HIs insights from his researches definitely helped ‘the rest of us in our quest for progress’. Including a few of your students I shouldn’t wonder.
Marxist or Christian.
‘It could be claimed, for example, that the most important part of Marx’s theory is contained in the saying:
‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’
But before Marx developed it, what force had that saying had? Who had paid any attention to it? Who had inferred from it—what it certainly implies—that laws, religions and moral codes are all a superstructure built over existing property relations?
It was Christ, according to the Gospel, who uttered the text, but it was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion—which, of course, is why they hate him so.‘
As I Please. 25 February 1944
View discussion

Tory Nation by Samuel Earle review – tangled up in blue
25 May 2023 20:22
In response to silverlocks
Any attempt to understand Braverman (and Sunak) is incomplete without reference to her Colonial heritage; the role her class played in enforcing corrupt British rule in Africa; and the attitudes towards the lower classes it acquired during this period as capo-regime to Don Britain.
Her caste were tax-collectors. Servile agents of the powerful hated by the people, and enemies of Robin Hood and Jesus.
View discussion

Tory Nation by Samuel Earle review – tangled up in blue
25 May 2023 20:11
In response to nottaken
There are critical political eras when the level of hysteria and identity crisis purges language of all meaning – as the infantile defence mechanism of a bankrupt ideology faced with reality. Jargon and vacuous labels are key to this collective act of self-lobotomy.
The epidemic of meaningless, abusive babytalk is shocking, acting like an anaesthetic on the brain. A new nonsense cult-word is needed almost every week.
The overall effect is to paralyse thought at exactly the time when we need clarity most.
View discussion

Man arrested after car crashes into Downing Street gates – as it happened
25 May 2023 14:47
In response to nonanon1
And naturally, the welfare state is to blame for the collapse of Brexit, and for immigration rates (it’s far too cushy here for the unemployed).
So just as naturally, Cameron calls for welfare ‘reform’. By which he means slashing benefits for the poorest and most vulnerable (again) to see what happens.
View discussion

Foreign Bodies by Simon Schama review – pandemics and prejudice
25 May 2023 11:21
In response to trp981
‘ the ingrained conspiratorial bent in the human psyche’
Wrong.
The implanted conspiratorial bent in the dehumanised Property-obsessed Consumerist psyche.’
Right.
Human Reciprocal Altruism is ingrained. But is impossible in a species which suspects everyone else – which is the objective of the toxic culture now threatening civilisation.
View discussion

Putin’s threat hangs over tiny Moldova, but its people filled me with hope
24 May 2023 19:12
In response to artheachtarsamradh
Look at it this way.
All Putin’s allies are hard-line advocates of unlimited fossil fuel extraction and use. Why wouldn’t they be? They’re all authoritarian, nationalist regimes, and oil/gas means easy political power in any language. Many are totally mineral-dependent economies with no other option. ‘Carbonists’, if you like.
The weaponisation of Russian energy supplies in this war has played a massive role in driving the Anti-Putin world away from Carbon death-fuels. And whether they know it or not, the Anti-Putin alliance is now fighting a global war to control the use of fossil fuels. It is not about territory, nationality or any other flag-waving mirage.
When they realise the true import of this war, they might finally put in the effort required to not just defeat Putin, but rescue the future.
View discussion

Get a grip, Westminster – Suella Braverman speeding is hardly the issue of the day
22 May 2023 17:12
Let her pay her own lawyers for advice on private Road Rage Therapy.
Like everyone else.
View discussion

In a contest between Tory MPs and reality, Rishi Sunak is refusing to pick a side
17 May 2023 14:52 In response to francoisP
It’s manifestly not as simple as that.
The political tectonic plates are shifting with the global pre-apocalyptic Identity Crisis of climate change.
The traditional ‘Traditionalists’ are now scientifically wrong, and they know it. All their assumptions are proven delusions which will destroy the ecosystem. And they know it. The only political alternative is everything they loathe and despise; cooperation, cooperation, cooperation. Or ‘socialism’ as they call it. The AntiChrist.
At this point in their crisis, they have to retaliate, and try to defy reality. It’s the only way to cling to their personal power and wealth. The global effect is a world war between the forces for a sustainable future, and those for repeating the past which got us in this mess. Progress and Reaction have never been so clearly defined, and naturally fighting over the use of fossil fuels, still the primary source of political power.
What else is the war in Ukraine about?
View discussion

In a contest between Tory MPs and reality, Rishi Sunak is refusing to pick a side
17 May 2023 14:37
Sitting on the fence in the current war between Rationalism and Nationalism is a loser’s game.
For a start, there is no fence. It’s a straight choice between Barbarism and Civilisation. A sustainable, cooperative future, or a mad hedonistic stampede to destruction.
It’s clear what the NatC’s want. “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” as the man who “mucked up” nationalism used to say.
Sunak wants a quiet road to power. That doesn’t exist either. More like the ‘primrose way to the everlasting bonfire’, down which all profess-ions are invited – especially Equivocators like Sunak.
View discussion

The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:42
In response to SparkTwain
According to the expert Astro-ethnologists who write TV series and movies, every civilisation ever, past and future, is as hierarchical and power-ridden as ours.
I wonder why?
View discussion

The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:37
In response to Fflb96
What sort of events?
This kind of bang has only been possible since the formation of cosmic dust. Our cision boundary is now almost at that point. Meaning that we are close to seeing the oldest big explosion that happened – and every one since.
The universe is big – and expanding – but not that big, yet.
View discussion

The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:34
In response to PDAWSON3
Human time doesn’t count.
This is looking back in time, to almost the beginning of visible matter.
The only kind that explodes.
Nothing in the real world is ‘infinite’ or ‘infinitesimal’. And the theoretical world doesn’t have a good word to say about them either.
View discussion

The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:30
In response to DecimusJunius
A very long wait.
Makes you wonder whether civilisations are designed to know all there is to know.
From our brief experience, it seems that just when we think we’ve cracked it – everything turns to dust in the desert.
View discussion

The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:26
In response to Readout_Noise
Why is it that the same people who are keen to hurl nuclear bombs at asteroids, won’t raise a finger to prevent an equally deadly threat to civilisation from Climate Disaster?
View discussion

Bird flu could become the next human pandemic – and politicians aren’t paying attention
16 May 2023 15:23
In response to BlackAsTheNightCat
‘The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, caused by zoonotic SARS-CoV-2, has important links to biodiversity loss and ecosystem health. These links range from anthropogenic activities driving zoonotic disease emergence and extend to the pandemic affecting biodiversity conservation, environmental policy, ecosystem services, and multiple conservation facets.
Alignment of the full-length genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 showed the closest relationship (identity 96%) was with the bat SARS-like coronavirus strain BatCov RaTG13. ‘
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00258-8/fulltext
And the more we destroy the ecosystem, the closer and nastier the next pandemic becomes.
View discussion

The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
15 May 2023 19:59
Since I first heard of it (courtesy of prof. Cox) the ‘Proton Gradient’ has fascinated me.
As a simple, causal explanation of how we are, and where we are going, it beats any religion anytime.
Not to mention providing a natural measurement of time in the Moment of energy exchange.
View discussion

The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
15 May 2023 17:30
In response to RichardWilkinson72
Every Junkie knows how, they just can’t.
The pain is just too much.
View discussion

A new mood of seriousness has taken root. Populist chaos won’t cut it any more
14 May 2023 12:23
The tories may be a pack of cannibal rats in a sack, but the global identity crisis that created them is still raging. America is even more insane than ever..
Nobody has yet concocted a magic spell to make the consequences of Climate Disaster go away, and with it the inevitable political implications for those whose imagination and sense of entitlement is petrified in the past. Those who are doing everything they can to deny and vilify the scientific methods of the modern rational world. The world is still split between Nationalism and Rationalism as in Ukraine.. Between Carbonism and Humanism.
The seedbed of hate-politics is as fertile as ever.
View discussion

Eurovision represents everything that is nonsensically termed ‘woke’ – that’s what makes it so special
12 May 2023 14:54
In response to fishworld
What existing word?
The noun meaning a monster that hides beneath bridges, or the verb meaning to promenade in a meaningful manner?
Either way its use never conveys any concrete meaning, and is always an ad-hominem cop-out from dialogue. Mostly when confronted with a repeated inconvenient question or request for evidence.
Something like this:
A. “Labour is a racist Party!”
B. “What evidence do you have for that accusation?”
A. “Stop apologising for Labour racism.”
B. “But what evidence do you have?”
A. “Troll!”
View discussion

The coronation arrests are just the start. Police can do what they want to us now
12 May 2023 13:39
In response to zblargx
Just as Brexit was insurance against EU Co2 targets – and global cooperation of any kind.
Cooperation is the Anti-Christ. All Eco-awareness is regularly labelled ‘communism” by the Trump’n’Mail world. Only the ‘free market’ can be trusted to avert the climate change it caused.
Not that there is a problem, of course. It’s all a plot by the global Bolshevik conspiracy, including every scientist on Earth (they all get rich from taxpayer-funded grants).
View discussion

Eurovision represents everything that is nonsensically termed ‘woke’ – that’s what makes it so special
12 May 2023 12:44
Almost all new verbiage of the internet era has been completely meaningless babytalk. The verbal equivalent of sticking fingers in ears and going LALALALALA!
‘Troll’, ‘snowflake’, ‘trope’, ‘blob’, ‘woke’ all clear signs of an argument lost, or pretentious jargon designed to bypass argument and pervert thought.
Another sad symptom of the further infantilisation of consumer culture, where everything, including truth, is merely a commodity which must be available in all flavours and colours NOW!
View discussion

The coronation arrests are just the start. Police can do what they want to us now
12 May 2023 12:20
How can any decent respectable concerned citizen now protest against the status quo? Their careers and livelihoods are threatened by a criminal conviction for holding an idea. Teachers will be threatened with disciplinary action for ‘bringing the school into disrepute.’ The same sword of Damocles hangs over all the professional classes essential to effective social struggle, but also intimidates everyone with a boss. Your business is now his business.
The base of climate-change protest will be forced back to the stereotyped crusty subculture beloved by the tabloids.
Obviously, the NatCs are criminalising ideas to deter dissent. But most especially, dissent against Fossil-Fuel capitalism – which is the ultimate heresy. They know that science has condemned their toxic dogma to the dustbin of history, but have to Deny this terminal diagnosis, and refuse to be reminded of it repeatedly by those who know better.
View discussion

Archbishop of Canterbury’s attack on illegal migration bill ‘wrong on both counts’, says minister – as it happened
10 May 2023 13:41
The King, the Archbishops of Canterbury and Durham, Head of the Armed Forces, former tory PM’s and a queue of current tory MPs. Not counting the entire legal establishment and diplomatic service..
All now Enemies of the People who ‘hate Britain’, apparently.
NatC isolationism is just another writhing spasm in the terminal Identity Crisis of ecocidal Consumerism.
View discussion

Go forth and socialise: why meeting up with friends is good for the economy
7 May 2023 18:32
In response to Favier
The global economy has decisively and deliberately destroyed communities and community values all over the world. Healthy communities don’t need Consumerist Junk.
In Britain the ‘economy’ of the Right To Buy legislation has shattered previously coherent and healthy communities into alienated multi-pods of transient sub-tenants, all slaving away to much to do much more than pay their extortionate rents.
The Economy decides everything.
And this one, the one now destroying the eco-sysytem, stinks.
And the sooner it poisons itself the better.
View discussion

Of course the BBC needs to change – but Britain must decide what kind of broadcaster it really wants
4 May 2023 16:31
In response to HenryBovis
Garbage.
Every commercial broadcaster is overtly funded by and a channel for lies – by definition.
They are all controlled by unelected companies that buy their ad-space.
The BBC does not make money from them or broadcast their toxic propaganda every 15 minutes. So like all other non-commercial organisations that cannot make more millionaires (the NHS) it must be hounded out of existence.
A hundred BBCs could never lie as in a year much as one day of commercial TV anywhere.
View discussion

Sunak and Starmer are obsessed with home ownership. Neither seems to want to fix the housing crisis
2 May 2023 16:39
In response to bluejay2011
the bank really owns your home.
In Sickness and in Health.
‘Til Death do You part.
Hence the term ‘mort-gage’.
View discussion

Sunak and Starmer are obsessed with home ownership. Neither seems to want to fix the housing crisis
2 May 2023 16:36
In response to jae426
You obviously don’t watch any of the million GetRichQuick property shows on TV.
I happen to be at a primary observation post at the battle-lines of social housing and its vandalisation.
The crazed Right To Buy pillage of social homes has blighted every community it got a hold of, further impoverished local councils, and delivered a gold mine to a new generation of Rachmannite spivs.
The conflict of interest between leaseholders and tenants naturally resulted in the cheapest option being chosen by TMO’s for regeneration work, not the safest – with famously horrific consequences.
View discussion

Sunak and Starmer are obsessed with home ownership. Neither seems to want to fix the housing crisis
2 May 2023 15:58
In response to TedFisk
‘Most voters are homeowners’
Steady on John.
Who told you that?
I agree that far too many are intoxicated by the property Fetish, and see themselves as lords of the manor, but I would bet that the ratio of properties to individual owners is actually going down. Ownership is being monopolised, not democratised. The people have never had less control over the national housing stock or the roof over their head.
View discussion

Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review – the economic anarchy of Liz Truss’s dreams
1 May 2023 18:01
In response to DenryMachin
Another widely reported study finds that a fifth of all CEOs are bona fide psychopaths.
And since, ironically, psychos of a feather stick together, it’s easy enough to understand how the tory government agglomerated.
View discussion

Our bronze age coronation rites seem to speak to a modern love of the sacred
30 Apr 2023 11:24
Anyone bored by a Coronation is bored of their own history.
In this case, for many, a once in a lifetime chance to see the world through the eyes of a medieval peasant watching the Abbey at full steam imparting the cosmic force to its Earthly representative, and ensuring future prosperity for all God’s subjects.
If that isn’t like someone finding the ON switch for the Great Pyramid, I don’t know what is.
Rabid republicans just don’t understand that history can’t be uninvented. It should certainly cost us less to keep and should not interfere with democracy, but ignoring it is a strange and perverse form of intellectual self-denial. This is doubly strange in a culture apparently addicted to TV history.
View discussion

Richard Sharp was Boris Johnson’s toxic legacy – never again should politicians pick a boss for the BBC
28 Apr 2023 17:48 In response to IHateItHere
If you want the BBC (and therefore the NHS) to be sold to the highest bidder, just say so.
View discussion

I once argued fiercely for child-free spaces. As a mother, I still believe in their sanctity
28 Apr 2023 14:59
In response to VelmaDinkley
God how we hate children and childhood in this benighted, paedophobic backwater.
Not content with treating them as status symbols from day one, we then pack them off on the one-way express to productive labour, stopping only at graduation, mortgage and marriage before a long debt-ridden crawl to the care-home. Eliminating as much spontaneity and life as possible.
A not-so-pale imitation of the ideal joyless Victorian Utilitarian upbringing.
View discussion

Calls for Boris Johnson’s role in Richard Sharp’s BBC appointment to be examined – as it happened
28 Apr 2023 11:50
In response to PeterSijbenga
It’s like watching war criminals in the dock – automatically denying the authority of the court. They should remember that they are the lucky ones.
Sometimes their equivalents end up hanging upside-down in garages, or dead in Libyan sewer pipes.
View discussion

If Dominion prevails against Fox News, that won’t harm press freedoms
18 Apr 2023 17:01
It may not damage press freedom but it will help stop media lies.
But then who next?
Politicians? Advertisers??
All obliged under law to stop butchering the truth.
No wonder our Neo-feudal barons are petrified at the thought of Fox getting its overdue come-uppance..
View discussion

Sunak needn’t worry – maths mania already has our schools in a stranglehold
17 Apr 2023 19:19
In response to Marshall1960
If Sunak wanted more kids to enjoy Maths – or anything worthwhile – he should do something to curb the toxic Junk-Mania which is sucking the native curiosity, enthusiasm and joy of discovery out of childhood, and turning it into profit for the corporations.
Instead, Sunak and his crew of paedophobes see children merely as units of production to serve the needs of a dying Consumerism.
View discussion

Sunak needn’t worry – maths mania already has our schools in a stranglehold
17 Apr 2023 19:10
The ‘anti-maths mindset’ is just another Heath-Robison weapon in the tory culture war against the inevitable, alongside the ‘anti-growth mindset’ which opposes green policies.
In this case, the term is another squalid code for the Humanities in general, which corrupt technocrats like Sunak see as a complete waste of profitable manpower. Not to mention being a route to ideas beyond their control.
Dangerous ideas.
View discussion

Sunak needn’t worry – maths mania already has our schools in a stranglehold
17 Apr 2023 19:02
Sunak wants a Nation of penny-pinching accountants, serving a faceless technocracy.
A Spreadsheet stamping on a human face – forever.
View discussion

David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
10 Apr 2023 15:25
In response to Eastonian
So how do you propose he makes the films which have done more to educate and provoke than any products from any other media, print, radio, TV, movie or internet?
From a desk in Leicester?
When fat tourists stop flying twice a year to sprawl by heated pools in the desert, to forget their empty lives as slaves of eco-cidal consumerism then you’ll have a case against Attenborough. But of course, if they did, there would be no need for Attenborough in the first place.
View discussion

David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
10 Apr 2023 15:19
In response to SimplyBlue
‘After we are gone, the earth will heal itself.’
Who told you that?
And how long will this ‘healing’ take?~
When ecology spins out of control, as we have seen to, there is no clear end in sight to the vicious cycle.
For all you know, the Earth might spiral into another toxic Venus indefinitely. With no life bar some primitive microscopic viruses trapped below ground. Possibly.
Is that the universe you want?
View discussion

David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
10 Apr 2023 15:14 In response to Mouldilox
AND anglers have to know what fish eat what and at what time of year.
An angler without a knowledge of the ecology being fished is like a midwife without a bicycle.
View discussion

David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
10 Apr 2023 15:12 In response to Mouldilox
Anglers are the most widespread, long-serving and accurate monitor-force for British rivers.
The vast majority of anglers now fish for fun, so they throw their catch back, so they can hook it again. Some become old friends.
Good luck to anyone trying to feed a family from the rivers these days. And if they could, it would be the food with the lowest carbon footprint. So what’s your problem?
View discussion

David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
10 Apr 2023 14:17
In response to Sadone
Then, like most BBC Bashers, you would have your foot in your mouth without engaging your brain.
The Paul Whitehouse series Our Troubled Rivers pulls no punches either.
Or doesn’t he count, on the Lineker Principle?
View discussion

David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
10 Apr 2023 14:11 In response to ChampagneEcologiste
He did nothing except lead the BBC Nature project for 50 years as presenter and manager, without which most activist organisations would still be struggling to get enough members to fill a parish hall.
Before Attenborough arrived, an interest in nature was mocked as an eccentric pastime. For bullied anglers and pigeon fanciers.
After, being able to recite the carbon cycle became cool.
In fact, there is generally a footnote to most Attenborough series which warns explicitly of the dangers each case-study faces. Perhaps you couldn’t wait.
Also slipping beneath the radar is the Paul Whitehouse series on the poisoning of British rivers and coastlines.
Not to be missed.
View discussion

The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
7 Apr 2023 17:22
In response to Skanderbegthegreat
Irregardless.
Everyone knows the world they’d prefer to live in.
And it isn’t the one of mass cold, disease, serfdom, illiteracy and endless bloodshed after the Roman collapse.
Europe was rescued by the very glimmers of civilisation you mention. They were hardly representative of a brutal time. Which only serves to demonstrate the contrast.
View discussion

The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
7 Apr 2023 17:15 In response to Pagey
And you know the difference, do you? For everybody, everywhere – and even everywhen.
Talk about the Spanish Inquisition.
No fantasy – no mystery.
No mystery – no curiosity.
No curiosity – no science.
Rigid demarcation never does any good.
View discussion

The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
7 Apr 2023 17:11 In response to Pagey
You’re almost a millennium late.
If it hadn’t been for Charlemagne, the Carolingean revolution, and the work of the Northumbrian abbeys under Alcuin, the classic texts would not have been translated and the ‘Enlightenment’ would have been postponed indefinitely.
View discussion

The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
7 Apr 2023 11:57 In response to Pagey
“any thinking Socialist will concede to the Catholic that when economic injustice has been righted, the fundamental problem of man’s place in the universe will still remain.”
Orwell. As I Please.
View discussion

The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
7 Apr 2023 11:42 In response to Pagey
Long story, but it was this ‘fantasy’ that rescued European civilisation from the Dark Ages – by the skin of our teeth.
Don’t diss fantasy, it’s far more useful than you realise.
View discussion

The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
7 Apr 2023 11:38
In response to counterculture
Mosques often serve as invaluable support centres, preserving the sense of community which ‘native’ Britain has sold for a mess of pottage.
Which is a major reason that mosques and Islam are hated by the property’n’profit-driven British establishment.
View discussion

Deaths, black mould, failing staff: social housing doesn’t have to be this way
5 Apr 2023 13:57
In response to Fivedogday
The property market is as toxic and ruthless as ever.
Social housing is needed more than ever.
Homes are not a charity but a vital infrastructure. One which not only provides a stable family and community environment, but also liberates the individual for more creative activities.
Which is why social housing is the enemy of the current band of brigands masquerading as politicians.
View discussion

Deaths, black mould, failing staff: social housing doesn’t have to be this way
5 Apr 2023 13:53 In response to brookbond
If you mean people prefer private tenancies to council tenancies I’d love to know who told you.
View discussion

Deaths, black mould, failing staff: social housing doesn’t have to be this way
5 Apr 2023 12:35
Social housing is being eaten by the cancer of the Right To Buy larceny and Rachmanite absentee landlordism.
And the related communities are killed too.
Many of Britain’s evils stem from this sacrifice on the altar of Property Worship.
I should know, having been a TRA secretary for 20 years off and on.
View discussion

Thérèse Coffey says infrastructure such as super sewers ‘could add hundreds to people’s bills’ – as it happened
4 Apr 2023 11:55
In response to hubbahubba
Everyone forgets the Europhobic propaganda oil tanker which had been steaming through the British media for decades before any ‘remain’ campaign could even gets its boots on.
View discussion

Thérèse Coffey says infrastructure such as super sewers ‘could add hundreds to people’s bills’ – as it happened
4 Apr 2023 11:46
How long will this promise to ban wet-wipes last?
Not that it will make a blind bit of difference, or stop farmers dumping into watercourses because of slashed environmental grants.
Or eradicate the crony capitalism which pays giant corporations to poison Britain at the taxpayers expense.
You couldn’t make it up.
View discussion

Abby Dow’s four tries help England thrash Italy in Six Nations mismatch
4 Apr 2023 11:31
In response to Rainrain80
But Rugby is inherently a game of ‘mis-matches’. Of David wings and scrum-halves against giant Goliath locks and props. That is part of its glory.
The issue is one of creating space for creative play and eliminating as many impacts as possible. The relative reductions in size, speed and (probably) brutality of the Women’s game help in this regard, which is why the womens’ game can often be more lively than the mens’, which all too often runs into a blind alley.
The simple solution, given the lack of attendance all round is to literally provide more space by making the pitch 10 meters wider for elite games.
If the sport cannot find the paltry investment needed for this investment in the future, it is doomed.
View discussion

Every indictment will make Trump stronger – and Republicans wilder
4 Apr 2023 11:16
In response to AlfredMurnau
Which ‘truths’ do we hold to be Self-Evident, again?
Trump is a brutal mega-gangster fascist of the old school. Bribery and corruption are his bread and water, which, if the is any justice, will be his diet soon. 60% of Americans now seem to agree.
Far from being the end of the world, threatening future presidents with the Trump treatment is a very welcome extension of justice over the White House elite.
View discussion

Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 15:01 In response to brookbond
How about ‘defunding’ a few tax-dodging billionaires.
View discussion

Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 15:00
In response to Cdnner
Not on your own you can’t.
Rearing children used to be a far more communal effort, involving neighbours and extended family.
Which is why, when communities were destroyed, the fake word ‘parenting’ had to be invented.
View discussion

Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 14:57
In response to HereWeGoAgainDost
So the problem is the inferior ‘blood’ in the class system of those genetically unsuited to parenthood.
It’s a good thing we can test for that sort of faulty gene now, so that we can eliminate it from the gene pool.
View discussion

Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 14:52
It is only the world of the alienated nuclear family that needs reminding of this truism.
Most of humanity throughout history has understood that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.
The commodification of childhood in our culture, and the indoctrination from birth in the dogma of consumerism, amounts to a form of child-abuse, but on a monstrous scale.
View discussion

Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review – the human face of the socialist state
2 Apr 2023 12:40
As made crystal clear in this review, and apparently in the book itself, Stalinist East Germany was to socialism what the Spanish Inquisition was to Christianity.
So why the headline?
View discussion

Keir Starmer publishes tax returns, revealing he paid £118,000 in last two years – as it happened
23 Mar 2023 12:09
In response to musigny

He ‘knows’ now that he misled the house by telling it that the rules and guidelines were obeyed.
So he has to invent a different set of rules for No 10 which were easier to obey, and which, in his head, he can claim were ‘imperfectly’ but adequately met.
As with every aspect of sick consumerist toryism, everything is packaging.
View discussion

Keir Starmer publishes tax returns, revealing he paid £118,000 in last two years – as it happened
23 Mar 2023 11:10
His desperate defence boiled down to an absurd attempt to retrospectively rewrite & downgrade the rules we all obeyed to match the level his No10 booze-culture broke them, and to give credibility to his ridiculous claim that inside his head he believed he was telling the truth.
In other words he merely admitted there is one Rule for Him and another for us. As we said all along.
The man is clearly sick, like too many CEO’s.
View discussion

Boris Johnson ‘very much looking forward’ to appearing before MPs investigating whether he misled parliament over Partygate – as it happened
21 Mar 2023 12:59
To recognise existence of ‘institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia’ is to recognise that there is such a thing as society after all. Which is why it must be constantly denied in the face of incontrovertible evidence.
View discussion

How many of those calling for Putin’s arrest were complicit in the illegal invasion of Iraq?
20 Mar 2023 11:53
In response to grm69
Correlation is not causation.
Civil chaos in Iraq was the breeding ground for DAESH.
The cause the chaos was not the removal of Saddam, which many Iraqis yearned for, it was the lack of a post-war plan – as in 1945 Germany.
(too ‘socialist’ for Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Condo-leeza Rice.)
View discussion

How many of those calling for Putin’s arrest were complicit in the illegal invasion of Iraq?
20 Mar 2023 11:40
In response to eamonmcc
Removing a hated dictator of his own people did not cause the devastation of Iraq and chaos in the region and beyond, not replacing his regime did.
Whether by apathy or design, the absence of any plan except blind faith in market forces caused the chaos we a re now living in.
View discussion

Boris Johnson and Partygate: the stakes will be huge at this week’s critical inquisition
19 Mar 2023 13:51
What’s this new excuse he’s about to publish?
Long-Covid amnesia?
We’ve heard everything before, likewise the committee, so no need for a long hearing on Wednesday.
A simple “We’ve heard these lies already. On yer bike.” should do.
View discussion

Mona Lisa v ‘the monstrous’: the grotesque, shocking side of Leonardo da Vinci
16 Mar 2023 12:46
In response to LouisRiel
If artists are not curious, they are not artists. Just decorators.
Likewise. No curiosity – no science. Just technology.
You can’t in fact ‘assure’ me of anything.
The ‘anti-intellectualism’ is all in your inability to address the common aspirations of humanity. And your managerialistic need to divide and package disciplines, and alienate them from each other.
View discussion

Mona Lisa v ‘the monstrous’: the grotesque, shocking side of Leonardo da Vinci
15 Mar 2023 16:51In response to LouisRiel
‘they’ve neither the training nor the philosophy for it’
Here we go again with the meaningless, divisive, stagnating qualifications.
Both artists and scientists express themselves in the universal medium of curiosity. Which paths they take is largely down to chance and freedom, not ‘training’. Until very recently, you could hardly tell them apart, and the words hadn’t even been invented.
What ‘training’ have you had to deserve the vote? Or have an opinion on the existence of god?
View discussion

So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:58
In response to Billbunt
Lineker is a civilian.
The politicians are claiming that as such he has no right to express political opinions.
This rules us all out as voters – unless we have the right ‘qualifications’.
And also gags our freedom of speech.
And yet they claim Lineker was ‘offensive’?
A new low, if that were possible. But probably not at the depths of depravity yet.
View discussion

So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:52
In response to ColdRobin
Lineker earns far more for the BBC than he’s paid. A bargain at twice the price – which Sky would pay in a heartbeat..
Why so bitter.
I’ve noticed that those who get paid well for doing a job they love and are better qualified for than anyone else, always get the most vitriol from the Eunuch Classes.
View discussion

So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:35
In response to ByrhtnothofEssex
Dead on.
The morons who claim sport and politics don’t mix don’t admit to how interconnected they are by strict rules, laws, conventions and ethics.
The sports fans watching this farce knew that the Ref had bungled, and that the decision should be referred to VAR and reversed. Sports fans have an instinctive respect for rules and ethics. This generated the wave of solidarity which forced the result.
If only this gang of tory hooligans had the same respect for the rules of civilisation?
View discussion

So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:28
In response to GaryFenton77
Football is just a sterile folk-ritual without the socialisation that goes with it.
The endless post-match discussions in the pub which drag on longer than the game did.
This is invaluable to your ‘real’ fans.
Unfortunately this is TV, so punditry has to step up to the plate.
And very good pundits they are too. Far better qualified than any pub loudmouth.
View discussion

It’s taken a brave football star to inject morality into our shaming debate on migrants
12 Mar 2023 12:28
In response to Cenobite
What are your political ‘qualifications’?
I hope you never vote.
What would you DO with it?
View discussion

It’s taken a brave football star to inject morality into our shaming debate on migrants
12 Mar 2023 12:27
In response to vulgarius
You can’t ‘get your political views’ by yourself?
Lineker is expressing his views, not stuffing them down your throat.
If you have better ones, you’re free to express them too.
Oxbridge professors don’t have any monopoly on political thinking. No ‘expert’ does in any field. In fact, the more regimented, the more hidebound and static a discipline becomes.
Or Universal Suffrage would be as absurd as its Victorian enemies claimed.
View discussion

It’s taken a brave football star to inject morality into our shaming debate on migrants
12 Mar 2023 12:20
In response to Hak_a_dalan
“With the country focussed on ” the tory corruption of the BBC, and the obscene can of worms it unearths, along with the unavoidable unhelpful links to a wide range of pernicious tory policies, heads will have to roll. And none of them will be Lineker’s. Given the degree of solidarity expressed by the BBC sports team, his decapitation would be catastrophic.
View discussion

England suffer historic humiliation after France’s Twickenham tour de force
11 Mar 2023 19:37
In response to AD2023
What’s the ‘relevance’ of any crowd anthems?
The whole point is that they spring spontaneously from the tradition of rugby.
Why shouldn’t English rugby fans express a deep yearning for a purer, better place?
Especially after today.
View discussion

The BBC news channel revamp has been a PR disaster – but it also makes perfect sense
6 Mar 2023 11:22
In response to onemoreforkp
Cut to the chase. The BBC is the only source of information available to the British people not in the clutches of the advertising industry, property speculators in particular – without which the Daily Mail would not exist – or would have completely different politics. As would British society.
It is naturally the establishment voice, but an establishment which can be rejected at the ballot box.
Unlike the perpetual torrent of lies peddled by mercenary hacks of the billionaire, phone-hacking, tax-dodging, drug-dealing, money-laundering, unaccountable, un-elected, price-fixing, profit-crazed gutter media.
View discussion

The BBC news channel revamp has been a PR disaster – but it also makes perfect sense
6 Mar 2023 11:09
there will be advertising for viewers outside the UK
Then why not the choice of paying the licence fee instead?
Surely, as the Guardian must testify, a subscription service is infinitely preferable to one at the mercy of the markets. By definition, it is more independent.
Right, Guardian?
View discussion

The faux outrage over Sue Gray’s move to Labour is a ruse to protect Boris Johnson – don’t fall for it
4 Mar 2023 12:42
In response to goodcaptain
Too simplistic.
What is the Cause and Effect at work?
What series of events caused Johnson?
Take one global financial crash, add the certain knowledge of climate disaster, and it’s not difficult to cook up a wholesale neo-fascist identity-crisis paranoia, lavishly garnished with Johnsons, Trumps, Putins and the rest of the madmen.
View discussion

The faux outrage over Sue Gray’s move to Labour is a ruse to protect Boris Johnson – don’t fall for it
4 Mar 2023 12:35
In response to Kapone78
Like how to run a government?
In fact, Gray was never in the position to get personal goods on anyone.
View discussion

The faux outrage over Sue Gray’s move to Labour is a ruse to protect Boris Johnson – don’t fall for it
4 Mar 2023 12:33
In response to Hallodaar
He has to choose this weekend or he’s toast.
This is the week when the S hits the F.
View discussion

The faux outrage over Sue Gray’s move to Labour is a ruse to protect Boris Johnson – don’t fall for it
4 Mar 2023 12:32
In response to Testament235
It only looks ‘piss poor’ to those with minds already in the tory sewer.
Yesterday, Smogg raged against Gray on the grounds that she would have the goods on tory ministers (as if there was even worse to unearth).
This is because blackmail and extortion come naturally to his debased cult.
View discussion

Rishi Sunak is shaping up to be a prime minister Keir Starmer should be wary of
2 Mar 2023 15:21
“Sunak is capable of rebuilding at least some of the reputation for Conservative competence.”
You flatter them.
If the Windsor Knot did represent the glimmerings of sanity, it was soon snuffed out by the sight of Sunak praising the benefits of pre-Brexit Britain, and within the hour his press office contradicting him.
NI being able to trade feely with the EU – GOOD.
UK being able to trade feely with the EU – VERY VERY BAD.
And this is only the lunacy at the top.
When the Minister for Women and Equality equates the menopause with having ginger hair and sneers at the idea of caring, when the ex minister of Education hates teachers – the list is endless – Sunak has to do a lot more to re-staff the asylum before he can make any credible claims to competence.
View discussion

This deal could have been struck in 2021 – but the last thing Brexiters wanted was to get Brexit done
28 Feb 2023 13:07
In response to B1ngoCrepuscule
Now that the No 10 office has contradicted the Prime Minister, the game is not merely lost, but the loser has overturned the board.
View discussion

This deal could have been struck in 2021 – but the last thing Brexiters wanted was to get Brexit done
28 Feb 2023 12:16
In response to WulfrunianInGermany
The odds are that the DUPs vastly inflated sense of its own importance will kybosh this agreement at some point.
Anything to avoid their democratic duty to share power with republicans.
View discussion

There is a surefire way for the English to correctly pronounce Irish names. Just ask us
23 Feb 2023 15:59
In response to skeptichappy
I would say that the success of English-speaking Imperialism always had negative side-effects on English culture. One being the traditional assumption they they know how to pronounce a word or place-name better than the residents speaking it.
‘Aberfan’ being the most infamous, sickening example.
In some circles, to pronounce foreign words correctly was an effeminate sign of ‘going native.’ After all, the natives are only allowed to speak their own language at all by kind permission of the English.
They should be grateful.

View discussion

There is a surefire way for the English to correctly pronounce Irish names. Just ask us
23 Feb 2023 14:48
According to Alf Garnett:
“I grant you that other countries have got noises for things – but they’re not like – a real language.
So I’m not surprised the cloth-eared English cannot pronounce the ethereal construction of Irish Gaelic.
They can’t even get their tongues around the pedantically phonetic ‘noises’ of Welsh.
They don’t want to. They won’t listen.
View discussion

Rishi Sunak can’t compromise his protocol deal. He must face down the DUP
21 Feb 2023 12:30
In response to Freedomofspeecg
In Northern Ireland, the majority voted Remain.
The same Shouty Minority that lost base their identity and bet their future on the Battle of the Boyne and are now trying to destroy the Brexit agreement they welcomed two years ago, or the Good Friday Agreement which guarantees peace, or both.
In fact, there isn’t much they don’t want to destroy.
View discussion

If we defund opera saying it is for toffs, then only the toffs will go. Where’s the sense in that?
20 Feb 2023 12:45
In response to guyeverton
‘what Britain has that continental Europe doesn’t have (on the whole) is a class system.‘
Total and utter garbage.
Capitalism is now the world religion, and its hierarch is everywhere, and now computerised.
If you want to know your economic class, just check your ‘credit-rating’.
Same thing.
View discussion

Be warned: the next deadly pandemic is not inevitable, but all the elements are in place
8 Feb 2023 12:28
In response to RomanTotale_XVII
Covid, as managed by Pile-em High Johnson, taught us that the effect of ignoring scientific advice to lockdown is the highest death-rate in Europe and a cull of thousands of the most vulnerable (and expensive) members of society.
View discussion

Be warned: the next deadly pandemic is not inevitable, but all the elements are in place
8 Feb 2023 12:24
In response to ruffledfeathers
‘Pigs and poultry do not have to be intensively farmed‘
Depends if you want to make a profit and want your business to survive in the face of overwhelming corporate competition. Or not.
View discussion

Be warned: the next deadly pandemic is not inevitable, but all the elements are in place

8 Feb 2023 12:21

How is the creation of more zoonotic pathogens not inevitable when all the toxic forces of deforestation, mass-extinction and industrial and factory-farming which created Covid are even more rampant now?

View discussion

We don’t need ‘miracle’ technologies to fix the climate. We have the tools now
7 Feb 2023 12:52
In response to Spike501
At what point is the inherently huge waste-level of consumerism ‘factored-in’ to the sums?
Eliminate that (as must happen) and the task of available technologies becomes much easier.
Stop trying to defy the laws of thermodynamics. Or ‘get a quart from a pint pot’, as my granny used to say.
‘pint’ – An amount of liquid capable of quenching the thirst of a farm-labourer after a morning’s work.
‘Quart’ – Two ‘pints’
View discussion

We don’t need ‘miracle’ technologies to fix the climate. We have the tools now
7 Feb 2023 12:44
Available technologies are easily able to meet our needs.
Especially if the obscene waste driven by toxic consumerism were eliminated.
The advocates of hi-tech gimmicks like nuclear power are trying to keep pace with the exorbitant demands of capitalism. This is trying to get a quart out of a pint pot. Perpetual Growth within a closed system is not physically possible.
And even if the Greenhouse Effect was a myth, our ecosystem is still doomed from the poisoning of our oceans, and the mass extinction of species to make burgers.
The radical shift from the failed competitive dogma to a sustainable cooperative global ideology has never been more vital.
When the Sec.Gen of the United Nations sounds like Trotsky, something significant is happening.
View discussion

The Guardian view on rugby union: a sport rich in drama is at a crossroads
3 Feb 2023 13:22
In response to Tiffie41
Where there’s brass there’s muck.
Rugby has just become part of Gravy-train Britain, with all its corruption and poison.
View discussion

The Guardian view on rugby union: a sport rich in drama is at a crossroads
3 Feb 2023 13:20
In response to Comments2Go
Skill has nothing to do with sport.
By definition ‘sport’ is unpredictable. An organism which suddenly displays a characteristic for which there is no explanation. A chance mutation which can occur in any game at any time.
In the case of rugby, this means constant suspension of expectation.
Result – drama.
As opposed to a computer game – only with human victims.
View discussion

The wreckage of Brexit is all around us. How long can our politicians indulge in denial?
1 Jan 2023 16:09
In response to thegreatfatsby
The Identity Crisis you identify is not merely post-imperial British, but pre-climate catastrophe Global.
Who wouldn’t be panicked into conspiracies, denialism and myths at the prospect of extermination?
View discussion

We had no idea we could get social housing, but it has changed our lives
19 Dec 2022 15:15
In response to jdey99
And until someone did it, powered flight was not possible because ‘God did not give us wings’. Have you seen footage of the first attempts at aviation?
View discussion

The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse
9 Dec 2022 14:42
In response to phvero
For the same reasons people are happy to live in the shadow of a volcano.
View discussion

The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse
9 Dec 2022 14:41
In response to MarkPJNY
‘The U.S is anything but monolithic.‘
The global corporate hegemony is.
And is determined to impose its death-worship everywhere.
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:51
In response to DauGiHyfryd
Stonehenge was a giant international effort on the scale of the Euro-tunnel, involving the peaceful cooperation of ‘tribes’ from the Orkneys to Germany.
It could never have been completed by force, and the timescale of its construction means that the era was largely peaceful.
How does your single piece of research refute the achievement of over 1500 years work, which is still standing?
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse

20 Nov 2022 12:41
In response to thegreatfatsby
‘These characteristics are nearly always in tension.’
Human nature has been perverted by power ever since we learned how to manage excess production.~
That is NOT ‘always’.
And given that we now have enough productive capacity to easily cater for the global population, Power as such becomes obsolete.
But try telling that to those addicted to it.
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:38
In response to Beleagured
Where do you want to live?
Not that ‘life’ will be an option apart from a few acid-resistant algae.
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:36
In response to roverthehillandfaraw
Genuine Austerity (combined with Utility) won the 39-45 show.
Then it was a collective sacrifice for our survival as a country. Now it will be a sacrifice for our species. Which is more important?
The orgy cannot go on forever. The laws of nature state that indefinite growth is not possible within a closed system (you can’t get a quart out of a pint pot).
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:27
In response to SimplyBlue
‘that is what humanity is, always has been, always will be.‘
Garbage.
Toxic property-based power structures have only been prevalent for a few thousand years of our existence, and only in a few areas of the globe.
In many cultures, co-operation was still the norm until we exterminated them.
Ask Captains Cook and Blye what they thought of Tahiti.
Human ‘nature’ is inherently cooperative and tends to egalitarianism.
Human Reciprocal Altruism, the Evolutionary geneticists call it.
View discussion


Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 11:44
In response to Beleagured
Money Makes Morality.
If the markets say it’s right, it’s right.
That’s why Bishops can bless battleships.
View discussion


Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 11:42
In response to roverthehillandfaraw
I do absolutely mean ‘levelling down’ the West’s gross level of over-consumption.
And stripping the Billionaire class of its booty.
Any problems with that?
It’s going to happen sooner or later when global civilisation cracks under the strain. So better do it in an orderly fashion while there are still governments and electricity.
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 10:58
In response to ceales
And get less Human with each pathetic status symbol squirrelled away.
It’s a disease.
‘Class-insecurity’ would cover it.
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 10:55
In response to Chris2817
Wherever money is put into education and general welfare, birth-rates collapse.
Equality is the answer to the population problem.
Not mass-extermination by the Consumer God.
View discussion

Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 10:52
In response to Beleagured
‘Homo sapiens wants ever more and more of the ‘good things in life’
It wants no such thing. The natural human instinct which put us in charge of the environment is cooperative, and therefore far more interested in sharing than stealing.
You’re confusing Humanity with psychopathic billionaires.
View discussion

Our leaders had a final chance to halt climate breakdown. They failed each and every one of us
18 Nov 2022 16:08
In response to dwatsuts
‘there is nothing special or sacred about human life‘
So destroy it as fast as possible.
Makes sense to a maniac.
Name another life-form that even knows that it’s mortal, let alone that it is conspiring in its own death.
Name another species that knowingly kills itself.
What gives us the right to exterminate the millions of other species who would also perish because of us
View discussion

The Guardian view on Britain’s electric vehicle industry: slow-motion car crash
15 Nov 2022 16:30
In response to woolwich
Billions are about to die.
And global cooperation is the only viable strategy for a sustainable future.
The competitive Consumerism which is poisoning the planet cannot be trusted, it is dead. And the closer the climate disasters get, the more people will become conscious of their common dilemma, and the causes of it.
View discussion

Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline
15 Nov 2022 15:50
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
Languages are ways of thinking about the world.
Each one provides a different viewpoint.
Your C19th Utilitarian rules demand regimentation and monoculture.
Is that the world you want?
View discussion


Austerity 2.0 is not a necessity – it’s a choice. Why won’t the media say so?
15 Nov 2022 13:03
Austerity 2.0 is not a necessity – it’s a choice. Why won’t the media say so?
Why indeed?
Where indeed?
Here indeed, for a start.
BBC: 4 days ago.
‘Economists question ‘black hole’ in UK finances’
‘ the Progressive Economy Forum, which campaigns to end austerity, said that “fiscal hole” is merely the difference between an uncertain forecast – of how much the government will spend and borrow in future under current plans – and what it can afford to do if it is to hit its own targets – that debt starts to fall as a proportion of the economy three or five years from now.
If the economy grows faster or the time frame changes, the “hole” can shrink or grow dramatically, the economists said – far more than it would because of spending cuts or tax rises.
Using official forecasts from the OBR, the authors of the research, economists Jo Michell and Rob Calvert Jump, conclude that small changes in forecasts for future interest rates and growth, and what is counted as government debt, dramatically alter the size of the predicted gap in the public finances.’
Read on.
View discussion

The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:53
In response to StevenPG
Why SHOULDN’T the rich pay for the industrialisation that made them that way?
View discussion

The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:52
In response to digit
The thirst for oil is the thirst for power.
If every home were energy-self-sufficient, politicians would become obsolete overnight. As would most laws.
In other words, if Ukraine was powered by renewables at a local level rather than nuclear hellholes, Putin would be impotent.
Power-independence of the many threatens the status of the powerful few. So renewable technology must be suppressed as much as possible.
View discussion

The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:47
In response to PeterNewcastle
‘they have been aided and abetted in this by much of the mainstream media. including the BBC,‘
Total and utter garbage.
Without the BBC pioneering environmental awareness for the last 50 years, often alone, organisations like Greenpeace and FOE would hardly exist.
As for the token appearances of the cranks, if the world of hard science can’t make then look like the idiots they are, gawdelpus.
View discussion

The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:39
In response to Echoshedman
‘The trouble is the consumerist identity is it’s the one the vast majority still identify with‘
Until the lights start to go out and the holiday home slides into the sea.
There will be a lightbulb moment for the world. Let’s hope it’s soon enough.
It’s not as if there is any choice in the matter.
View discussion

What next, petrol on a Picasso? Threatening art is no answer to the climate crisis
16 Nov 2022 17:14
And stopping a horse-race to get the right to vote is also going ‘too far’.
Spoiling people’s enjoyment.
View discussion

Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline
15 Nov 2022 16:46
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
Speaking more than one language expands the mind (Fact).
Teaching French and German in English schools is a sheer waste of time since a year after their GSCEs it’s all faded from lack of use.
The 2nd language to teach in English schools is obviously Welsh, with conversational experience available within an hour or two drive.
It would do just as much good to the young brain, educate the English in the culture of their nearest and oldest neighbour, stop the English from sounding silly when trying to pronounce basic Welsh place-names, and help revive the language which the English deliberately tried to exterminate more than once.
Call it ‘Reparations’.
View discussion

Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline

15 Nov 2022 16:38
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
the world speaks English.‘
No it doesn’t. Thank goodness.
And even if it did, that would be all the more reason to preserve the last surviving alternative viewpoint on the world.
Looking at how politicians and businessmen and generals have mangled, perverted and abused English, you’re welcome to your Triumph.
There is such a thing as too much victory.
View discussion

The Guardian view on Britain’s electric vehicle industry: slow-motion car crash
15 Nov 2022 16:30
In response to woolwich
Billions are about to die.
And global cooperation is the only viable strategy for a sustainable future.
The competitive Consumerism which is poisoning the planet cannot be trusted, it is dead. And the closer the climate disasters get, the more people will become conscious of their common dilemma, and the causes of it.
View discussion

Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline
15 Nov 2022 15:50
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
Languages are ways of thinking about the world.
Each one provides a different viewpoint.
Your C19th Utilitarian rules demand regimentation and monoculture.
Is that the world you want?
View discussion

Trump’s march back to power has faltered. Now comes the real challenge for the global left
9 Nov 2022 18:58
The message is simple.
‘Cooperate or perish’
António Guterres COP 27 day 2.
There Is No Alternative.
‘We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over. Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster.’
(Inger Andersen, executive director of UN Environment Programme.)
‘Root’ as in ‘radical’, as in uprooting the choking weed of Consumerism.
View discussion

How can we cut soaring demand for meat? Try a hybrid burger
7 Nov 2022 16:30
In response to mrshoppo1
Why?
Because so-called ‘choice’ is destroying the ecosystem. And …
It isn’t real ‘choice’ at all since it is not informed, but based on the publicity and propaganda of the fast food industry, which is the second biggest misinformation culprit after the fossil-fuel gangsters..
View discussion

How can we cut soaring demand for meat? Try a hybrid burger
7 Nov 2022 16:2
In response to RiseUp351
How much CO2 does it take to process vegetable protein into a cosmetically acceptable state?
View discussion

How can we cut soaring demand for meat? Try a hybrid burger
7 Nov 2022 16:24
Try taxing the pants off it and cutting portions down to something Human.
Every main course I see in restaurants looks like Desperate Dan’s cow-pie. Since when did pizzas and Yorkshires get to be the size of car tyres?
A ‘small’ portion of chips now feeds two.
View discussion

Rishi Sunak wants to await Gavin Williamson inquiry result before deciding whether to sack him – as it happened
7 Nov 2022 14:25
And in today’s Times:
‘A minister has claimed that Sir Gavin Williamson raised details about her private life during a conversation in an attempt to silence her while she was on the back benches.
… Another female Tory MP has also provided evidence to the party about a recent encounter with Williamson.’
Is there no end to this man’s f****g talent?
View discussion

06/06/2022
I may be wrong but I think Boris Johnson is done for. I can’t see his Tory cult surviving
6 Jun 2022 10:50
In response to Foster6the6imposter6
The stupid “Left-Right” distinction makes no sense when looking at this sort of policy.
Let’s face it, this fake symmetry has never been fit for purpose.
As useful as the terms ‘up’ and ‘down’ in outer space.
Nobody can define the difference between ‘left’ and ‘right’ to a visiting Martian. It is a polarity which stupifies political thought, while invoking a mass of ancient emotive cultural associations from every Old Master of the Last Judgment to everyday language like ‘adroit’ and ‘gauche’.
‘Sinister’ – ‘right’?
View discussion

03/06/2022
Martin Rowson on the Queen’s platinum jubilee – cartoon
3 Jun 2022 20:29
Plati-Jube will neither prolong nor help end the Monarchy.
To call for its ‘abolition’ is putting the cart before the horse. Trying to cure the symptoms rather than the disease.
The embodiment of a Hierarchical culture based on property and power-worship can only be smothered under a wave of egalitarianism. Such as the one required to combat the causes of climate change.
View discussion

01/06/2022

Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war

1 Jun 2022 17:55
In response to MattB242
It is completely natural to feel an affinity for the place you grew up. The deepest influences are instilled during childhood.
This is very different to the power-politics of nationalism. Patriotism is passive, nationalism is aggressive.
When the British left stops sneering at patriotism, it might stand a chance of winning an election.
View discussion

Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war
1 Jun 2022 17:49
In response to MattB242
You call abolitionists who will watch the Coronation ‘hypocrites’.
Rather, they are simply taking part in a slice of history, and acknowledging that, whatever its negative influence, the Monarchy is an inextricable part of their culture, and displaying an inescapable understanding of their history.
How do you propose to ‘make it gone’?
Mass brainwashing? A bonfire of History?
You might as well try to abolish religion.
Religion and monarchy will die out in good time, when global crises create a more egalitarian norm. But even then, the cultural influences of both will not disappear overnight, as most of them will be too deep-seated and indirect to be identified with their causes.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Trying to cure the symptom, not the disease.
View discussion

Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war
1 Jun 2022 13:30
In response to tonystoke
Johnson’s politics would have lost us the war. And yet the history of the cooperation which won it has been hijacked by the Squander-bugs and Spivs. Fake patriots who refused to even wear facemasks to protect their fellow-citizens.
Very few people alive have seen a Coronation, unlike previous generations, who would have seen more than one in their lifetime.
I pay my rates. I want my coronation!
View discussion

Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war
The appeal of Platijube is based on people’s perennial eagerness to feel that they are part of history – of something bigger than themselves.
The notion that an institution as extended as the monarchy can be dismissed as meaningless, and can be eradicated, is bizarre. As will be demonstrated by the number of abolitionists who find themselves watching the next Coronation, if only to get a sense of what Westminster Abbey was created for, to see the old girl working at full steam, and to get inside the minds of our ancestors who witnessed the same ceremony a thousand years ago – IF they have any sense of and respect for history.
The same sense of history as those who witness the solstices at Stonehenge.
Why not demolish it and build a much-needed hospital for the Hampshire area?
View discussion

31/05/2022
Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 18:23
In response to alexito
For scientific purposes.
But would you force everyone to wear digital watches? Because it’s the same technocratic agenda. The same obsession with pointless precision.
And just as debilitating to the imagination and intellectual freedom.
View discussion

Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 18:11
In response to ProjectXRay
You’ll want to ban the analogue clockface next, and emasculate all imagination from everyday life.
When you start your project to build a Moon-Rocket, metric units will be very useful to you.
Most people buying spuds and ordering pints will still think in analogue units, with a relationship to the objects of the world they see.
View discussion

Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 18:06
In response to Chrispytl
For some on the metric side, it is a matter of fundamentalism.
A browse of social media will uncover an alarming number of people who would totally eradicate Analogue Humanist units of measurement. In the name of ‘progress’.
It’s hard to conceive of a more effective means of alienation than Total Digitisation, forcing all thought into scientific units too cosmic or microscopic to be visualised or imagined..
View discussion

Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 17:57
Johnson’s new gimmick is as mired in pop-nostalgia as everything else he tries.
But, there is a strong case for retaining Humanist or Analogue systems of measurement which relate to objects in everyday life and exercise the imagination, however useful metric (digital) systems are to technocrats and accountants.
There is plenty of room for both.
Metric claims for precision are undeniable, but so is the fact that the Pyramids of Giza were built on a unit determined by the human forearm. Vitruvian Man is not based on the circumference of the Earth; rather, the other way round.
The alarming revelation of this debate is the degree of outright hostility and intolerance expressed by those claiming that metrication represents ‘Progress’.
Their demands to eradicate the past and sterilise culture don’t sound very ‘progressive’ to me.
View discussion

27/05/2022

even science can’t explain the creatures clinging on to Johnson

The science of Psychology can explain them with one word.
Psychopaths.
The victims of a disease which destroys the ability of the sufferers to empathise with their fellow creatures and enables them to believe that the damnable heresy of yesterday is the glorious orthodoxy of today. As with the tory Windfall Tax U-Turn, which is one of the most egregious cases of doublethink outside North Korea.
Stalin is smirking in his grave.

19/05/2022

It’s too soon to celebrate Putin’s losses – the hard miles are yet to come for Ukraine
19 May 2022 15:33
There is already pressure on Kyiv to make concessions to Moscow, and it will only increase as the broader economic impact hits home.
Economic impacts which will only increase pressure even more while the so-called ‘alliance’ refuses to behave like one and share the burdens of war, instead of imposing all the pain on front line states in the fuel embargo and refugee crisis.
The winners in a war are generally the side which rations most effectively.
View discussion

16/05/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MehmetJoe and @MayorofLondon
It’s not just ‘a racist with a gun’, it’s a huge proportion of the official U.S. opposition, who peddle the same fascist ‘Replacement Theory’. If that doesn’t worry you, you’re braindead.

Photo illustration of Tucker Carlson, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz overlaid with photos of Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, David Lane, and The Turner Diaries.

axios.com
Racist ‘white replacement theory’ goes mainstream with Republicans
A growing number of Republicans are promoting “white replacement theory,” once the provenance of white supremacists.
7:39 PM · May 16, 2022·Twitter Web App

15/05/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @DPJHodges and @brianmoore666
Apologism for Johnson is not ‘compromise’ but COLLUSION. Without political pragmatism there would never have been any Labour governments. Including 1945. Your determination to stay in opposition is a credit to your fundamentalism, but a disaster for ordinary working people like me.
6:07 PM · May 15, 2022·Twitter Web App

Remote working is making the UK a more equal place – however much Jacob Rees-Mogg may sneer
15 May 2022 17:54
It’s a matter of ownership.
The lives of supervised workers under one roof are the property of its employer. And the routine of being owned tends to condition the political behaviour of the workforce, making it more obedient and institutionalised.
Any taste of freedom, such as that provided by Covid requirements, is hard to relinquish, and the Ratchet Principle kicks in.
In the words of the song: ‘How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?’ The Black Death opened similar horizons. Much to the despair and downfall of the feudal Catholic hegemony Rees-Mogg still clings to.
View discussion

14/05/2022

‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 15:26
In response to RationalFacts
It only helps to prove that 1970 was 50 years ago, when Climate Science as we know it was in its infancy.
This we knew already.
Infants cannot walk, talk or think properly. Chemistry was Alchemy once. Astronomy began as Astrology.
Climate Science has been grown up for a long time now, and can runs rings around your puny urban myths and Click-Bait sites.
Want more evidence? Real evidence..
“The influence of global warming on the unprecedented extreme climatic events between 2006 and 2017 has previously been underestimated, according to a new study from Stanford University, US, which could have major consequences for people’s lives.
The study shows that predicting the likelihood of future extreme weather events by analysing how frequently they occurred in the past underestimated about half the actual number of extremely hot days in Europe and East Asia.”
Cosmos
View discussion

‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 14:03
In response to Paulhalsall
The first mention of the Greenhouse Effect I remember was in a school library edition of Paris Match from 1970.
Mentions of global cooling from the time were based on the fact that we were due one, and indeed entering a cold phase.
Technically, we still are. But we have spewed so much CO2 that we have overcome the natural cycle.
View discussion

‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 13:57
In response to RishiNoLongerDishy
Now you’re denying’ the science of assessing the methodology of science.
You haven’t provided any evidence yet. Just half-remembered hearsay from decades ago.
Why break the habit of a lifetime?
More science for you to refute with memories.

“”Most climate models are a little too eager to glaciate below freezing, so they are likely exaggerating the increase in cloud reflectivity as the atmosphere warms,” said LLNL coauthor Mark Zelinka. “This means they may be systematically underestimating how much warming will occur in response to carbon dioxide.”
These results add to a growing body of evidence that the stabilizing cloud feedback at mid- to high latitudes in climate models is overstated. “
SCIENCE DAILY
View discussion

Rob Kenyon @biginaboxReplying to
@Vayod3 @IiiSocrate and 3 others
You’re still basing everything on current rates of consumption and predicted ‘growth’. All chasing rainbows. A sustainable future means radical reduction in energy consumption. IE. the death of Consumerism. Which is inevitable one way or another. Nuclear epidemic or no..
1:40 PM · May 14, 2022·
Twitter Web App

‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:41
In response to Luvelyguy
A common social media myth.
Try some science.
“the Danish institute’s models show ice volume at the 2021 minimum extent was greater than in some past years, such as 2019 and 2020. However, it was still much smaller than levels seen in the early 2000s.
Arctic ice shrinking is a trend that goes back decades, according to records from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Satellite surveillance since the late 1970s shows Arctic sea ice cover during the minimum extent has declined by about 13% each decade, NASA says on its website. And the pattern holds all year round.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/21/fact-check-arctic-antarctic-ice-didnt-reach-record-highs-2021/6503500001/
View discussion

‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:31
In response to Umberleigh
In case you hadn’t noticed, Britain just missed yet another Winter, and has seen a Spring drought across huge areas.
View discussion

‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:23
In response to ServiusGalba

They really need to get some better advice on how to sell their message

Science is denied. Direct action is criminalised.
Let’s wait until the chaos starts.
Maybe that’ll get the ‘message’ across to the Consumerist Zombies.
But even then, it won’t be seen as the result of toxic Pig-Trough culture, but be blamed on the ‘hordes’ of ‘migrants’ ‘flooding’ Britain to scrounge off our welfare state and steal our women.
That’s what’s happening now, so why not then?
View discussion

14/05/2022

‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:14
In response to RishiNoLongerDishy
You are denying almost everything.
It’s becoming clearer every day that the only thing ‘wrong’ about the science is how much its predictions were underestimates of the chaos to come.

“We found that the institutional aspects of assessment, including who the authors are and how they are chosen, how the substance is divided into chapters, and guidance emphasizing consensus, also mitigate in favor of scientific conservatism. Thus, so far as our evidence goes, it appears that scientists working in assessments are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate threats.
<a href=”https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/&#8221;
rel=”nofollow”>Scientific American.

““It’s not so much that climate change itself is proceeding faster than expected — the warming is right in line with model predictions from decades ago,” said climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University. “Rather, it’s the fact that some of the impacts are greater than scientists predicted.”
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2021/07/26/624249.htm

View discussion

13/05/2022

We need optimism – but Disneyfied climate predictions are just dangerous
13 May 2022 16:57
In response to GaryCross

good, honest private sector scientists

How ‘honest’ are they about their unstinting endeavours on behalf of the Toxic Sector seeking ever more creative uses for oil and gas and plastics? And ever more efficient methods of deforestation.
The ‘private sector’ merely serves the needs of the Consumerism which poisoning the environment and society. When it finally admits its true role, and abandons it, then it might show signs of ‘honesty’.
Until then it is in profit-driven Denialism. The lapdog of every Kleptocratic tyrant on the planet.
View discussion

11/05/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @JinglyLenny and @paulmasonnews
When Putin invaded and occupied Crimea, he surrendered all rights to expect that the West would not react. By threatening to invade the EU and Finland, he proved his paranoid megalomania, and preparations had to be made. He is the ‘existential threat’
7:50 PM · May 11, 2022·Twitter Web App

10/05/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @RivetStuart and @BBCNews
The fetishisation of Power in our sick culture is the cause of most psychopathic behaviour. Sexual abuse is just one assertion of identity by those who can only achieve respect through fear.
2:01 PM · May 10, 2022·
Twitter Web App

09/05/2022

You say Partygate, I say Beergate – let’s call the whole thing off
9 May 2022 18:04

“He has been punished by the electorate for lying about it”

(!!!?)
‘Faith, here’s an Equivocator!
That could swear in both the scales against either scale;
Who committed treason enough for God’s sake,
Yet could not equivocate to heaven:
O, come in, equivocator.’
You say ‘Tomato’ and I say maggot-ridden dead dog in Downing Street – let’s clean the whole stinking mess up.
Equivocating Johnson with Starmer is incredible.
View discussion

05/05/2022

Ukraine is already winning: victory can be achieved without risking nuclear war
5 May 2022 12:45
In response to StandishDunbar
Russia is at the forefront of a Climate-Science Denying global Kleptocracy that will do anything to preserve its power.
China, India, Brazil, the USA if Trumpism regains control.. The list goes on.
Civilisation is outnumbered and any hopes of achieving IPCC CO2 targets are ashes.
Working out the consequences doesn’t need a computer the size of a planet.
View discussion

Ukraine is already winning: victory can be achieved without risking nuclear war
5 May 2022 12:17
I can only repeat what I said 2 months ago – that if there is an anti-Putin alliance, it should act like one, and equitably share the burdens, not expect Hungary to go bankrupt and Poland to house most of the refugees..
Putin’s warmongering has presented progressive politics with an opportunity for both promoting Western cooperation and cutting CO2 emissions. Both long overdue and inevitable in the long-term.
When Russian gas supplies to Europe end, Western allies should share reserves. It will mean reduced per capita consumption, but this had to happen sooner or later. Now’s as good a time as any to start.
In retrospect, Russian expansionism and its search for new fossil fuel markets in China was always a reaction to Western ‘threats’ to achieve Zero CO2 emissions. Ukraine is a Gas War…

View discussion

03/05/2022

You get filthy’ – the photographer who shoots sweaty workmen in building sites
3 May 2022 14:05

he often uses black-and-white film, partly because it’s cheaper, partly because it can handle the varied light on site, but also because it shows up the grime.

Sorry to be contrary, but from working on sites and photographing a wide range of workplaces for 40 years, digital is much cheaper than film, and shows up grime just as well.
If anything, now, film is the ‘middle class ghetto’.
View discussion

28/04/2022

In an era of electoral fragmentation, Labour must learn to embrace power-sharing
28 Apr 2022 11:50
In response to Plovdiv12
The Disaster Capitalism background of the Great Depression, blurred many political lines.
The terms ‘left’ and ‘fascist’ meant little by comparison with general opposition to the homicidal idiocy of the status quo. ‘Fascism’ did not mean what it means now – though it became obvious very soon, roughly when Aneurin Bevan saw through Mosely.
Ten years later, in another life-or-death crisis, Churchill was the blue-eyed-boy of the Communist Party. And Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’ to the Daily Mail.
Go figure.
View discussion

In an era of electoral fragmentation, Labour must learn to embrace power-sharing
28 Apr 2022 11:41
In response to BonyFido

Labour party decoupled from the unions

In other words a Labour Party robbed of financial backing, with only rich people able to afford to run for office. Eliminate the working class at a stroke! Brilliant.
Why haven’t the billionaire-backed tories thought of it before? Oh, they have, repeatedly. It’s their wet-dream.
Very constructive.
View discussion

In an era of electoral fragmentation, Labour must learn to embrace power-sharing
28 Apr 2022 11:34
In response to MikePicken

Sarwar and Starmer’s ploy is a cynical move to try to reassert the notion that only sole Labour rule at Westminster is the way forward.

A mirror of Corbyn, then?
View discussion

27/04/2022

What’s the best thing that Elon Musk can do with Twitter? Delete it
27 Apr 2022 12:50

Delete it

And throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Surrender the Information War to the terrorists.
There are as many uses for Twitter as there are users, which is just a club with rules which hold it together. And which is more self-didactic than it is diatribe.
Musk’s adolescent interpretation of freedom ( ‘When people you don’t like say things you don’t like‘) is no licence to shout FIRE! in a crowded theatre. Neither is his obscene wealth.
View discussion

25/04/2022

Working 9-5 doesn’t mean being chained to a desk. Someone tell Jacob Rees-Mogg
25 Apr 2022 16:53

” Deloitte tells staff they can work from home forever
Boss Richard Houston says accountant’s 20,000 UK employees will not be required to be in the office for any set number of days a week.
Deloitte has told its 20,000 UK staff that they can work wherever they want when Covid restrictions are lifted as the accountancy firm adopts a fully flexible approach”
( Daily Telegraph.)

If it’s good enough for the top accountancy firm Toilette & Douche, it’s good enough for Downing Street.
View discussion

21/04/2022

Boris Johnson to face inquiry into claims he misled parliament over Partygate – as it happened
21 Apr 2022 15:46
In response to ConansMight
Brexit was caused by decades of Europhobe lies by mercenary hacks like Johnson and peddled by billionaire, phone-hacking, tax-dodging, drug-dealing, money-laundering, unaccountable, un-elected, price-fixing, profit-crazed gutter media.
Propaganda which perverted British culture, and corrupted Truth in the name of power.
The last straw for reactionary brexiteers was the fact that Global Warming would demand the end of Consumerism, and as proven by Science, and require unprecedented global cooperation. Cooperation is just another world for socialism. And that would never do, even though it means rescuing civilisation from the ravages of profit. Even though it means denying science.
View discussion

19/04/2022

Seriously, Tory party, there is no pooper scooper big enough to clear up Johnson’s constant mess
19 Apr 2022 12:38
In response to Deling63
“Keir having a beer and eating pizza at a constituency office” at a planned meeting.
Eating at meetings was not illegal. Whitehall staff did it all the time.
Planning a party certainly was illegal.
How many times did Starmer lie about his meeting? What was the verdict of the Metropolitan police?
Next pathetic excuse for the lawbreaking liar?
View discussion

15/04/2022

Johnson to stay because of Ukraine? Nonsense. The war makes it more urgent that he go
15 Apr 2022 17:07
In response to NeitherYankNorBrit
How would that go?
Let’s hear his denial as you imagine it (omit the roars of Kremlin laughter)
View discussion

Johnson to stay because of Ukraine? Nonsense. The war makes it more urgent that he go
15 Apr 2022 17:04
In response to GarethapdDafydd
As a proven liar, he is a weapon in Putin’s information war.
How do you imagine him dealing with the next Russian lie?
View discussion

Johnson to stay because of Ukraine? Nonsense. The war makes it more urgent that he go
15 Apr 2022 17:01
Until Johnson resigns, Britain can never again accuse Putin of lying.
The Information war is lost.
View discussion

13/04/2022

Lie, deny and move on – how much longer will the Johnson mantra plague British politics?
13 Apr 2022 16:16
In response to SterlingPound
Putin will accept this propaganda gift with thanks.
Johnson’s crimes validate Putin’s Alt-Truth ideology, and discredit the entire alliance against him.
Don’t try holding your breath until Johnson calls him a liar again.
View discussion

Lie, deny and move on – how much longer will the Johnson mantra plague British politics?
13 Apr 2022 15:36
In response to Baggywhacker

“is it not better for Johnson to remain in power? “

Definitely better for Putin’s Alt-Truth ideology too.
Now he can run Johnson’s lies to Parliament on a loop on state TV, sending the message to his troops that their crimes will go unchallenged.
View discussion

Lie, deny and move on – how much longer will the Johnson mantra plague British politics?
13 Apr 2022 15:32
As a proven liar, Johnson can now never accuse Putin of lying.
Until he resigns, the information war with Russia is lost, and Putin can commit genocide with impunity.
The ‘Ukraine Defence’ is not only cynical opportunism and insulting to the people of Ukraine, but a strategic disaster.
View discussion

12/04/2022

They broke the law and are disgraced. Whatever they do now, shame will cling to Johnson and Sunak
12 Apr 2022 17:35
In response to ScottieDug
Fabricant plumbed the depths of disgust when he accused NHS workers of being criminals, and thereby excusing Johnson & Sunak.
He even had the gall to blame anti-Brexiteers for Johnson’s predicament.
View discussion

They broke the law and are disgraced. Whatever they do now, shame will cling to Johnson and Sunak
12 Apr 2022 17:25
In response to FellingUpBeat

can’t see anything fundamentally being done about this other than Labour calling for them to resign and both of them just ignoring it.

The Speaker can be asked to recall Parliament for a vote of no confidence.
Given the tory majority, this may not evict Johnson, but it would expose the tory MPs who endorse the Big Lie. Their constituencies would then at least know the truth about the representatives they have chosen – for future reference .
View discussion

They broke the law and are disgraced. Whatever they do now, shame will cling to Johnson and Sunak
12 Apr 2022 17:02
You can always depend on Johnson to lie, lie, and lie again. To display utter contempt for the public and parliament.
And on his Zombies to find bizarre excuses for him.
The fact is he is either a total liar, or an utter fool, or both.
Any permutation renders him unfit for office – especially during an economic, medical and security crisis.
View discussion

06/04/2022

The United Nations has the power to punish Putin. This is how it can be done
6 Apr 2022 16:57
In response to VM1964
You can laugh at the principles of partnership all you like, but they are essential to defeating Putin.
Your posturing would be less obvious and hypocritical if you were prepared to make the same sacrifices you are demanding of Germany and other front line states. Are you?
Any Putin Quislings in Europe are not in power, and Germany remains the state which has implemented the most genuine sanctions against Russia – unlike Johnson’s job-saving bluster. His cowardice in appeasing his xenophobic electorate by refusing to accept refugees, and his cynical opportunism in exploiting Putin’s butchery to save his miserable skin are in sharp contrast with the measured constitutionality of the German coalition. Contrary to populaist lies, Germany did not refuse to allow over-flights of its territory by NATO, they would have been illegal under German law – not that NATO was prepared to risk any such flights planned anyway.
Britain’s anti-alliance free-market approach to the Ukraine war will extend it by a year.
Post Cold War trade with Russia in a globalised economy was widely seen as a key to peace. Captain Hindsights like you did not foresee what Putin would become.
View discussion

The United Nations has the power to punish Putin. This is how it can be done
6 Apr 2022 13:58
In response to lindecarr

Members of the EU feeding Putin with billions of euros in exchange for fuel are supporting his destruction of a country

There could be an energy embargo tomorrow if all members of the so-called ‘Anti-Putin Alliance’ agreed to share their reserves equitably with the states dependent on Russian oil and gas. There is no ‘alliance’ until all members of it agree to bear the burdens, rather than cash in as front-line states like Germany risk bankruptcy.
Britain’s position is ‘I’m All Right Jack.’ Let Poland house 3 million refugees while we take none. It’s their fault for being in the wrong place.
Let Germany, Italy, Hungary, Greece and the rest suffer drastic cuts to their energy supplies – their fault for conducting legal business with Russia and trying to heal the wounds of the Cold War. While Londongrad’s illegal blood-money fed the Kremlin war-machine for decades.
View discussion

04/04/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @_V_5_M_ @Poodog73 and 2 others
What matters is the degree of sharing the burden. If Putin turns off the tap, which he probably will, Johnson will watch in glee as the German economy crashes. Then take the credit for the UK’s rise in the league table.
8:29 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @_V_5_M_ @Poodog73 and 2 others
That’s fatal to solidarity. ‘Equitability’ is the key element. If Germany is forced to bear all the cost of an embargo unaided, it would create a split in the alliance. It’s not too late to share. Either to defeat Putin or avert Climate Catastrophe.
8:14 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Poodog73 @GrumpyAmb and @KyivIndependent
All Anti-Putin states can ‘afford’ to share energy reserves equitably – IF they want to defeat Putin. AND climate change. CO2 emissions have to fall drastically. Now is better late than never.
7:41 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @jefemundo1 @Mels_ChechenKo and @KyivIndependent
Forcing the frontline states to bear all the pain is totally incompatible with any concept of ‘solidarity’, and totally disastrous. A gift to Putin. Germany has already taken more radical action than most other countries, even to challenging its constitution.
7:37 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Rather, Kremlin lie machine is so GOOD because it lives in a forest of untruth. By offering multiple-choice alternatives, it makes Truth a matter of ‘personal choice’. Truth has been Commodified.
What the KGB used to call ‘The Grey Masses’ like that.
6:03 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @scoobi66 and @MayorofLondon
No evidence, as usual. Just routine Trumpist smear-mongering and ‘Alt-Truth’. More hysterical reaction to the inevitable implications of Consumerist Climate Catastrophe. When refugee levels DO reach crisis levels, I hope you have a stock of tranquilisers.
5:43 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App

02/04/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @scoobi66 and @MayorofLondon
The Salisbury Poisoners didn’t need asylum visas. Ukraine isn’t at war with the UK. And unpaid parking tickets do not indicate terrorist sympathies. The truth is you just HATE the idea of the UK ‘Doing It’s Bit’. Enough of you in 1941 and we would be talking German now.
1:12 PM · Apr 2, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @scoobi66 and @MayorofLondon
They carry out checks on all, so they are all suspected of terrorism. Nobody else does that. You obviously HATE the idea of helping anyone. And dump all the burdens of this war on the front line states who have no choice. Time you ‘WOKE’ up to the realities your degradation.
1:07 PM · Apr 2, 2022·Twitter Web App

01/04/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @soave1000 @mrjamesob and @KevinStuart56
Cheap Brexit energy was based on the lie that Britain could not cut VAT. Johnson refused to do this before the Pandemic & still won’t. Neither will he take as penny from the corporations who are profiteering from higher prices while decent people choose between heating & eating.
8:56 PM · Apr 1, 2022·Twitter Web App

Boris Johnson wants you to forget Partygate. Don’t let him get away with it
1 Apr 2022 15:12
In response to PopeGregoryTheNinth
Ukraine was a golden opportunity for Johnson to save his miserable skin. His Falklands War. Delivering surplus stock to Ukraine cost nothing.
His only achievement so far has been to distract public attention from his crimes and fool what the KGB used to call the ‘Grey Masses’ into a fever of hero-worship.
His contribution to the anti-Putin alliance has been minimal at best. He concocts a refugee policy designed to fail, and would never countenance sharing any of the burdens of war with the front-line states. If Putin does cut gas to Europe, Johnson will sit back and watch while rival economies crash, the UK climbs the league tables, and he will take the credit.
His policies are pure war-profiteering, and actively damaging to the solidarity needed to defeat Putin.
View discussion

Boris Johnson wants you to forget Partygate. Don’t let him get away with it
1 Apr 2022 14:56
In response to chrisd324
At the height of Johnson’s Party-shame, I remember one of his Zombie MPs standing up in parliament and saying much the same thing.
That the problem was not that laws had been broken, but that the laws existed in the first place.
This from the ‘party of law and order’.
View discussion

31/03/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @bbcworldservice
If Putin does cut off energy to Europe, he will speed up the drive to nett Zero CO2 – which is his enemy and what we should be doing anyway – & which will make Europe more secure.
If China chooses to buy his cheap oil, Zero targets will be trashed, & civilisation far less secure.
11:02 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Charging for Covid tests in England just as infections surge? This is an act of national self-sabotage
31 Mar 2022 16:30
In response to JohnnieAysgarth
“Why?”
Because it will that mean people won’t know when they are infected and will infect others.
Causing higher rates, which will increase exponentially, under the current delusion that Covid is now ‘endemic’ and just another another minor inconvenience. Which will lead in turn to yet more variants, which may well be both more infectious and more deadly.
Next question.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @RichardBurgon
There is no alternative to equitably sharing available energy supplies among all members of the anti-Putin alliance. Forcing front-line states to bear all the burdens of energy costs & refugees means there is no ‘alliance’. Just those suffering & those carpetbagging on their pain
5:00 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @JimmyMonsieur @MarkGraham8492 and @DanielaNadj
EVERYTHING is wrong with a refugee policy designed to fail. A country which cashes in on war by dumping every burden of it on the front line states is a traitor, not a member of an ‘alliance’. A country which financed Putin’s war machine for decades.
chathamhouse.org
05 Reputation laundering and political influencing
4:51 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @scattysmum @CusackRitchie and 2 others
This government is cashing in on the war, and raking in billions in VAT from increased prices. While refusing to demand any sacrifices from the Corporations, it demands that you choose between food or fuel. And you LOVE it! No wonder this country’s going to the dogs.
4:44 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web A

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Sentinel49 and @michaelwhite
If you want Nazis, Russia has more than any European state. Many in the Duma itself. Nothing excuses Putin’s genocide.
https://cers.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2016/04/NeoNazism-and-Racist-Violence-in-Russia-Harriet-Neely.pdf…
2:12 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Anything the Glorious Leader does IS the law. He can make it AND break it simultaneously with no contradiction simply because he is The Leader. That’s DOUBLETHINK.
Johnson can get away with it, so Putin certainly can.
2:07 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

24/03/2022

23/03/2022

Tory MPs call the green transition ‘unaffordable’. Europe is proving that’s a lie
23 Mar 2022 15:16
In response to Martin_in_Cardiff
Of course it’s ‘him again’.
Anything to avoid cooperation on any scale, let alone the global cooperation needed to avert climate disaster. The knowledge that membership of the EU would mean adopting a common CO2 policy was a prime mover for Brexit.
Cooperation is just too close to socialism for him, and a deadly threat his sense of identity and entire Junkie lifestyle.
And he’s right on both counts. Like his buddies Trump and Putin.
View discussion

Tory MPs call the green transition ‘unaffordable’. Europe is proving that’s a lie
23 Mar 2022 15:08
In response to cardiffleftie
Ukraine IS the battle against climate change.
If Putin wins, and is free to peddle his fossil fuel to every despot and crackpot on Earth, so does the rest of the Denialist Kleptosphere, and you can kiss every CO2 target goodbye.
The IPCC recently made this clear.
View discussion

Tory MPs call the green transition ‘unaffordable’. Europe is proving that’s a lie
23 Mar 2022 14:58

‘The truth is that we can’t afford not to transform our economies.’

Fossil fuel dictators like Putin have to oppose transformation to cling on to power – which is a more powerful instinct than averting Climate Disaster.
To them the Nero Decree of the bunker: ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ makes perfect fanatical sense.
Putin himself has said that a world without Russia is not worth living in. Like the rest of the Kleptosphere, he recognised long ago that the nett zero CO2 targets of the Survivalist world meant the end of his power. His 30-year oil deal with China secured his future market, and meant that a fossil-fuel embargo by the west was relatively toothless.
Invasion of Ukraine therefore became a risk worth taking, And so here we are, in the first global climate war, fighting to avoid ‘the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of’ Putin, Trump and Xi’s perverted science.
Never in the field of human conflict have the stakes been higher.
View discussion

18/03/2022

Here in Hong Kong, Covid has surged and we’ve run out of coffins. Please learn from our mistakes
18 Mar 2022 15:24
In response to MickyPea
Until the next variant comes along.
Or even worse, the next Consumerist-spawned zoonotic pathogen.
Vacccinations and masks are all well and good, but do not address the causes of the plague of Pandemics we have created in the last 30years.
Namely,, the systematic demolition of wildlife habitat to make burgers. Which is also a key factor in accelerating climate change.
It is therefore doubly vital that the sabotage of Consumerism is halted, by any means available.
View discussion

Here in Hong Kong, Covid has surged and we’ve run out of coffins. Please learn from our mistakes
18 Mar 2022 15:16
In response to LastOfCarlos
They call themselves ‘Patriots’, but refuse to do the most patriotic thing they will ever have the chance to do.
If they’d been around in 1940, we would be talking German now.
View discussion

12/03/2022

Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:51
In response to LastDays

What makes a nation ?

There was no such thing until the invention of the steam engine.
Before that there were empires, kingdoms, city-states, and other fiefdoms. But no coherent, tax-collecting ‘nations’ defined by their ability to defend their borders with ammunition trucks.
China would seem to be an obvious exception. But even that was a multi-lingual empire united as much by its pictographic script as by brute force.
It only became a nation after industrialisation shrank it to a manageable size.
View discussion

Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:38
In response to Fallowfield

Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in 1842 and expanded into Kowloon later. The hand-over date was, by treaty, set as 1997.

And in all that time, it was never a democracy.
So much for ‘you never miss what you never had’.
View discussion

Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:30

They will not be able to protect cities from short-range shelling, but should be able to prevent bombing from the air and by long-range ballistic missiles.

Likewise, a steady supply of Bayraktar drones could permanently cripple the advance of tank convoys headed for Kyiv, and any other city. Especially when the Spring rains make the fields nice and boggy.
The question therefore remains; Why the hell hasn’t this already been done? Barricades of tyres and milk floats won’t last long.
View discussion

Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:23
In response to HELovelace
Putin is the latest autocrat in the long unbroken history of ‘Czarist Russia’, and has rewritten the book on Stalin, who cannot now be classified as a ‘socialist’ of any kind. Even to the most mercenary hack at the Daily Mail.
View discussion

Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:16
In response to BogDweller
What repercussions?
Let’s start with the loss of the Ukrainian harvest.
The last time that happened the entire Middle East erupted into the Arab Spring.
This is much bigger.
View discussion

08/09/2022

All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 13:10
In response to Freedomofspeecg
The idea that capitalist competition is a form of cooperation is a popular delusion.
An abuse of language no better than ‘War is Peace’ and ‘Freedom is Slavery’..
View discussion

All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 13:06
In response to bonnielass35
If everyone consumed as little carbon as my household, we would do fine.
Since I started working on a computer from home, my footprint has been drastically reduced. Just eliminating the daily commute put me in the black on the balance sheet.
The global democratisation of communication has been vital in informing the world of the dangers of Consumerism. An essential tool in raising class-consciousness in the struggle.
View discussion

All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 12:06
In response to Hermanovic
A zero-carbon world would rob the Oil-sheiks of their power. End of problem. Their power would be intensely diminished – they would do everything in tents.
So the sooner we get on with it the better.
As for the nuclear nightmare, not only are the decommissioning costs unsustainable. and they take far too long to build anyway, but the secret police needed to protect them is not a culture we should be promoting on a global scale. Not to mention the inevitable accidents…
View discussion

All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 11:59
In response to WhatEnlightenMeant
It’s no accident that the leaders of the Kleptosphere, from Farage to Trump’n’Putin are the most flagrant Denialists of climate science. They know that a zero carbon world would strip them of their power, and are determined to resist to the last – whatever the cost to everyone else.
View discussion

All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 10:57
We have to decarbonise eventually. Now is as good a time as any to start.
Naturally, it will mean that Western economies break the habit of a lifetime and learn how to share – to cooperate, rather than compete. But that was also something else which was inevitable for a sustainable future.
Consumption will also have to reduce to meet the capacity of sustainable, zero-carbon energy generation, obviously. But Consumerism is now a busted flush anyway, a toxic machine for destroying the environment, fuelling endless wars and spawning pandemics, so its death will be no loss to anyone.
View discussion

07/03/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MayorofLondon~
European economies are our competitors. When they are devastated by 7 Million refugees, Britain’s will benefit enormously. Their pain = Britain’s gain. Our policy is wholesale economic sabotage. Great news for the Brexiteers.
8:50 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @KalimeroFryWing @izgledakevrne and @carlbildt
He’s invading Ukraine to destroy Truth and corner the market in selling his fossil fuels to the Chinese and the rest of the Kleptosphere he leads. Thereby retaining power for the rest of his short life, and taking revenge on the rest of Humanity for his imminent death.
8:34 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @BaconatorJames and @MichaelRosenYes
Those who objected most to the removal of Assad and DAESH were the same people who SAID they objected most to islamophobia. Namely the vacuous pacifist nobodies to whom the Iraq War was a rhetorical gift from god. Those who gave a green light to Putin to massacre the workers.
8:30 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @PeaceFlowerSoul and @MichaelRosenYes
The fake words ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ have a long history of demonisation & sanctification. ‘Right’ is literally more ADROIT. ‘Left’ is SINISTER, GAUCHE, CACK-HANDED & wrong. The Blessed in Christian iconography sit on God’s Right Hand. Judas sat on Christ’s left. etc.etc.
6:21 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @AVO8OHM and @MichaelRosenYes
A cop out. Either you believe in Progressive values of equality & fraternity, or in reactionary elitism & nostalgia for mythical past glories. It is not possible to believe in both or neither. Which is why ‘centrist’ muddies the waters as much as ‘left’ & ‘right’. Use REAL words.
6:12 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @KalimeroFryWing @izgledakevrne and @carlbildt
Ukraine has its share of fascists for the same reason many other countries do 1) Post Imperialist disintegration – in this case of the brutal Stalinist empire. 2) Encouragement by Stalinist Putin & his ally Trump. But few places have more fascists in the seat of power than Russia
6:00 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App

Every day Ukrainians beg me to save their children. Violence and terror are raining down on them
7 Mar 2022 13:54
In response to Gettrotted
Putin’s pretext for this war was to ‘de-nazify’ Ukraine and liberate a terrorised population.
He could have avoided this war months ago by simply opening his borders to grateful Ukrainian people, flooding the airwaves with footage of their welcome, and basking in his image as their ‘Little Father’.
But he didn’t, because he knew nobody would go. That it was all lies.
Instead he chose this global disaster which almost certainly destroys any hope of meeting IPCC carbon targets. Literally a ‘scorched earth policy’.
Or ‘Nero Decree’ if you like. A revenge on Humanity which poses some very real questions about his state of mental and physical health.
View discussion

Every day Ukrainians beg me to save their children. Violence and terror are raining down on them
7 Mar 2022 13:35
In response to JustAnotherProfile

‘Russia’s economy is largely internal,’

I’m afraid that’s nonsense.
Russia’s economy over the last 20 years has been based almost entirely on exports of its mineral reserves. Especially on sales to Europe. They need hard currency to wage war, not just to buy imported goods – which nobody is now prepared to sell them anyway.
‘Super powers and great powers before them’ who have depended on the Russian model have collapsed catastrophically. Spain is a classic example.
If China and India want to support Putin’s Nero Decree, that’s their choice. But they are led by relatively pragmatic regimes which realise that their relationship with the wider world is worth more than the cheap energy Russia can provide. They have far more to lose than gain.
In practice, this war has rubbed the world’s nose in the overriding environmental agenda.
Sitting back and watching Putin destroy Truth is not an option.
Czar Vladimir claims he is liberating Ukraine from a nazi regime. Apologists and surrender-monkeys need to remember that if he believed this, he would have opened his borders to the oppressed population months ago, and flooded the airwaves with footage of their welcome by the Fatherland.
There would have been no need for any war as the rest of the world would have offered wholehearted support for his agenda. The fact he has not done so blows away his smokescreen of lies.
View discussion

Every day Ukrainians beg me to save their children. Violence and terror are raining down on them
7 Mar 2022 11:39
In response to Kdykes
Energy sanctions will hit Putin’s military most.
That the world continues to fund it is not just absurd but obscene.
I remember the Three-Day Week.
It wasn’t that bad.
View discussion

06/03/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @richardintheuk and @BBCNews
So dump all the burden on the front-line states as usual. Never mind, Britain will easily find ways to cash in. With any luck the record number of refugees will break their social services, and put Britain ahead in the economic tables. Good for the image of Brexit too
6:31 PM · Mar 6, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @KimThor93328499 @brianmoore666 and @CliveMyrieBBC
He hasn’t mentioned that Russia is the state where REAL nazis are in power (see link). Not leftovers from 1989 as in most european states. (Fuelled by Putin.) You’re saying France deserved to be annexed by Hitler because of Dreyfus and Gringoire. My arse.
https://cers.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2016/04/NeoNazism-and-Racist-Violence-in-Russia-Harriet-Neely.pdf…
3:47 PM · Mar 6, 2022·Twitter Web App

History replays like a half-forgotten song, but once we remember, it’s far too late
6 Mar 2022 12:38
In response to MontyReplies
Plaid and the SNP have not been ‘nationalist’ for decades.
They are ‘seperatists’ – from England, but ‘unionists’ with Europe, perfectly prepared to incorporate their national identity into a greater whole.
Ulster ‘Unionists’ are ‘nationalistic.
View discussion

05/03/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @chen65913021 @jackiepatie and 3 others
The recent history of the Donbass is one of myths, lies, and revenge. The same cocktail mixed to cause slaughter in the Balkans. The same mix that Hitler used as a pretext for his crimes. https://jstor.org/stable/261051
8:17 PM · Mar 5, 2022·Twitter Web App

02/03/2022

This is Russia’s way of war. Putin has no qualm about medieval levels of brutality
2 Mar 2022 11:30
In response to 1nn1t
If we’re serious about ZeroCO2 targets, now’s the time to start putting words into action.
It’s no accident that Putin risked his western oil & gas market now, after a decade of warnings that he was holding a stock near its sell-by date. A major trader in Spats and Bustles, with its only possible future market in China and other denialist regimes. No fossil-fuel sales for Putin = no power for Putin.
The rise of the Fossil-fuel Kleptosphere (including Brexit) coincides perfectly with the rise of irrefutable scientific evidence that the environment will not survive being poisoned for much longer.
Ukraine is a war against science and the future.
View discussion

This is Russia’s way of war. Putin has no qualm about medieval levels of brutality
2 Mar 2022 11:10
When are the drones supplied by Turkey going to strike the sitting-duck convoy headed for Kyiv?
Is it a case of seeing the ‘whites of their eyes’, and getting the tanks within range of Ukrainian ground-patrols to supplement the air-attack?
Since the off-road route seems to be too soft for tanks, are the roads mined?
View discussion

28/02/2022

Johnson’s government has drastically misjudged the public mood over Ukrainian refugees
28 Feb 2022 17:01
When the truth came out, Johnson immediately called it ‘fake news’.
I wonder which fascist prophet taught him to say that? Trump or Putin?
The foundation of this tory government is never, ever to share anything with anyone.
The concepts of Unity and Solidarity are anathema to them. Consistently, the Pain of front line states is Britain’s Gain. Let them bear the burden of refugees. Let them cripple their economies with an energy embargo.
They prove Nye Bevan right when he called them ‘vermin’.
View discussion

Johnson’s government has drastically misjudged the public mood over Ukrainian refugees
28 Feb 2022 16:58
In response to InAsMuch
So make the frontline states bear all the cost and burden as usual.
Britain’s economy can easily find ways to profit from their loss. Good for the image of a Brexit which has stalled even more than Putin’s fascist brigades.
Time the tories looked up the word ‘Solidarity’ in the dictionary.
View discussion

25/02/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @D_G_Alexander and @bbclysedoucet
And for those who still care, if Putin’s proposed Free Carbon Market with China comes off, he is guaranteeing that IPPC climate targets are killed stone dead, and consigning civilisation to dust.
He certainly cannot survive an EU style Zero Carbon future, so what else can he do?
5:34 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
Consumer Junkies addicted to CO2 are destroying the planet. Your deliberate ignorance will not shelter you for long. Barbarism like yours is the enemy represented by Putin and Trump. The most powerful gangsters in history
3:22 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
The end of Human civilisation and mass extinction of huge numbers of species is the highest stake there has ever been. The fact you are too terrified of being denied your Consumer Junk to admit the reality is not surprising. You will be forced into Cold Turkey sooner or later.
3:20 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
I’m astonished you can’t see the implications ‘sanctions will impact development ..and could expand to include Russian energy projects. This will likely push Russia closer to China as it seeks non-Western sources of financing for critical Arctic projects.’

wilsoncenter.org
World Reaction to the Invasion of Ukraine
2:55 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @theriptorn @Psemtex and 3 others
This is ‘world politics’ now. “for Russia, China is its top country trading partner and a key source of investment in its energy projects” And the result will be a High-CO2 Pact, including every science-denying despot on Earth. This is World Climate War 1.

aljazeera.com
Why are China and Russia strengthening ties?
Deepening of ties between China and Russia is unprecedented and comes at a time of escalating tensions with the West.
2:04 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @theriptorn @Psemtex and 3 others
How was the west to blame for Georgia or the invasion of Crimea? They were retaliations for the Ukrainian people’s rejection of a corrupt Putin puppet. For the assertion of freedom which set a bad example for the Russian people – your contempt for them is obvious.
1:58 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
As a fellow-traveller with Trump, Putin and the rest of the barbarian cult, you’ll believe anything they tell you. Sadly, all the science proves you wrong. This war destroys any hopes of avoiding climate disaster. As intended.
1:54 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to
@MartinC15307664 and @guardian
This war is a way for Putin to sell his oil and gas to China and the rest of the fascist Kleptosphere in order to retain absolute power. This means death to IPCC CO2 targets, and death to civilisation.
This is ‘unlike anything you have ever seen in history’ as the madman said
12:04 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @NarcAware @dissident_the and @DavidGauke
A widespread psychopathic apocalyptic reaction in the face of irrefutable science. The cult unable to abandon its Consumerist religion to save civilisation and the global environment.
11:57 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Musica101 @GaworMarkus and @guardian
Because Ukraine is NOT A MEMBER. Which again disproves your deluded theory that NATO is to blame. If only Ukraine WAS a member.~ Putin would not have dared to invade. Sorry – you do regard this an invasion, unlike the Chinese? Do you think Putin is a ‘genius’? Like Trump?
11:51 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

What’s going on inside Putin’s mind? His own words give us a disturbing clue
25 Feb 2022 11:27
His ‘mind’ is first and foremost concerned about where to sell his fossil fuels in the Zero Carbon world needed to combat Climate Change.
Like all panicking reactionaries and despots from Nigel Farage upwards, he is in flight from scientific reality. The Kleptoshpere he wants to lead would create a vast alternative market for his oil and gas and therefore guarantee the absolute power he awarded himself for life.
His buddy Donald Trump naturally agrees, and China, his principle proposed partner in crime, could not even bring itself to use the word ‘invasion’ for yesterday’s outrage. Even though it regularly poses as the defender of ‘sovereign states’ when it suits it.
The battle lines are therefore drawn in this First Climate War, which has little or nothing to do with recreating the past glories of the USSR, and everything to do with reorganising markets. Not a war of acquiring resources, but one of distributing them. Not unlike the Opium Wars.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
Putin is the one ‘punishing’ Russians. His fascist Kleptocracy has stolen everything from them and is shedding their blood to keep it. Sanctions will punish ordinary people on both sides. They have to. The stakes are too high.
11:11 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Musica101 @GaworMarkus and @guardian
Free countries wanted protection from a dictatorship they knew only too well. To protect their new freedoms. No maniac has the right to deny them their right to defence. Or to claim a ‘sphere of influence’ like Imperial Japan. Self-defence is no offence.
11:06 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @Pagebike1 and @guardian
And after all those centuries of subjugation, Ukraine was finally FREE once the people peacefully got rid of Putin’s Poodle Yanukovych. Why do you hate their freedom do much? Putin started this war, & will spread his fascist Kleptocracy worldwide, ensuring Climate Catastrophe
11:02 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

24/02/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @AndrewBodinger and @bbclaurak
These days real courage is always fascinating. Time will tell whether the British people will prove to be as ‘fascinating’ when the lights go out and the queues get longer. Especially the flag-wavers who weren’t fascinatingly patriotic enough to wear a mask to protect pensioners.
9:16 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @keithschapman and @guardian
A populist misconception. “Contrary to media reports published on Jan. 17, 2022, Germany did not deny British C-17 transport aircraft access to their airspace. “

theaviationist.com
No, Germany Did Not Deny RAF C-17s Bound For Ukraine Access to Its Airspace
The decision to avoid the German airspace was made deliberately by the Royal Air Force C-17s and the British were not really forced to fly around the
8:51 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @paulmasonnews
The most significant contribution was from China, who refused to call it an ‘Invasion’. This means they are playing their usual game of ‘See Who Wins’. Usually they are all over ‘breaches of sovereign territory’ – when it suits them. Not now, with a cheap Russian gas deal pending.
8:47 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @rblava and @guardian
“This is genius.” “How smart is that? And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper, that’s the strongest peace force “There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen—they’re gonna keep peace all right,” #Kleptocrats stick together.

fortune.com
Trump cheers on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. ‘This is genius’
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hasn’t diminished Donald Trump’s longtime admiration of Vladimir Putin. Quite the opposite.
7:47 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @fatfei_ @BBCPolitics and @bbclaurak
The story comes from the Electoral Commission, and shows that the tories are by far the biggest recipients of Kremlin Gold. Putin doesn’t bother bribing the powerless. You think the EC is lying on Starmer’s behalf? You’re crazy.
What are you prepared to sacrifice to defeat Putin?
7:21 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @irnbrudreaming @fatfei_ and 2 others
What sacrifices are you prepared to make to defeat Putin? Because, as Starmer makes clear, unlike Johnson, this is not a war on paper, but one which will put up prices of goods and services.
5:21 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @RhonddaBryant
Does the HOC and government have backup systems for when the cyber-attacks start on broadband services and other national infrastructures?
4:52 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @jonlis1 and @JANUSZCZAK
#Brexit was largely a reaction to the prospect of the radical policies needed to combat Climate Change. Putin’s fossil-fuel deal with China is the same – only with bombs. ZeroCO2 = Zero power for Putin. And the same for every other misanthropist Kleptocrat.
3:41 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web Ap

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @OwenJones84 and @115tpryan
Then consider this ‘opinion’. Between them Russia & China are forging a Fossil-Fuel Pact which will make Climate Disaster inevitable. Unless China pulls out, we are all stuffed. The word ‘democracy’ will merely be a word future archaeologists dig out of the rubble of monuments.
3:31 PM · Feb 24, 2022· Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @OwenJones84
All sanctions will effect ordinary people most, and turn them against the Kleptocrats. They can’t go on stealing from Russia forever. The same sanctions will also effect British & European ordinary people. No pain – no gain. That’s war.
3:26 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Otto_English
Given that Farage’s wet-dream of a fractured Europe was another green light to Putin, I’m not surprised he’s in hiding. The list of Kleptocrats who do not condemn this war against the future will be very interesting. Any news from Trump, Bolsonaro, Orbán and the rest?
2:50 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 14:35
Putin’s hopes of retaining absolute power rest entirely on selling fossil fuels to China and the rest of the Kleptosphere. A High CO2 Pact which would guarantee the Climate catastrophe the sane world has hoped to counter by consent.
Today killed off all hopes for that project – unless China now comes to its senses and assumes the responsibilities of the super-state it aspires to be.
Future historians, if there are any, will probably ascribe a significant degree of blame for this disaster to the market-madness and attack on European solidarity represented by Brexit. But they should also consider the persistent, pernicious influence of the ‘free markets’ in perpetuating the power of crazed despots of all complexions.
The results of the U.S. mid-term elections should be very interesting to them.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Putin’s ‘ideal’ is perpetual power. He knew a Zero CO2 world would emasculate him. A fossil-fuel alliance with China would save him. Unless China comes to its senses ‘the whole world including all that we have known & cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age’
12:17 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Berkorichard and @MichaelRosenYes
The ‘issue’ is the role of fossil fuels to empower dictators, using the ‘free market’. Putin’s planned Fossil-Fuel Pact with China & the rest of the Kleptosphere kills any hope of combating climate change, and guarantees a bleak future for Mankind. China will have to grow up fast
2:14 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 12:10
In response to Tiberius123
China has to be convinced that any fossil-fuel alliance with Putin is madness.
So far it has played its usual silly games, but now it’s time for it to grow up and bear its global responsibilities.
View discussion

Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 12:06 In response to clarityofthought
‘Sanctions against oligarchs while they might feel morally superior have never achieved anything.’
What sanctions?
How many Kleptocrats have had their assets seized?
View discussion

Rob Kenyon @Biginabox
Replying to @Tommy38276028 and @vicderbyshire
You think you’re safe? Putin’s plan to continue unlimited CO2 emissions in partnership with China means the end of Human Civilisation. Are you Human?
11:57 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @teach313al and @vicderbyshire
Tell that to the madman Putin, who would rather destroy civilisation than surrender his fossil-fuel power. This is not a war in a strange country far away, it is a war against YOUR future and that of your children.
11:55 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @cwab1964 @vicderbyshire and @EmmaKennedy
What’s ‘cold’ about it? This literally means a hotter world of unlimited CO2 emissions and the end of Human Civilisation – UNLESS China comes to its senses. All political and diplomatic efforts should now be directed at Beijing.
11:52 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Soothsayer_True and @RealScottRitter
‘Plagiarising’ who? How many Cruise missiles on Kiev will it take to convince you that Putin declared war? Sooner or later it will dawn on you that this also means the end of any global effort to combat climate change – as intended. Maybe that will bring you to your senses.
11:40 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @Biginabox Replying to @urbanigreen @ExtinctionR and @KremlinRussia_E
Like Trump et al, Putin would rather sacrifice Human civilisation than his power. ZeroCO2 would emasculate him. A Denialist fossil-fuel alliance with China would save him. So unless China grows up fast, Civilisation is doomed. We can never achieve EPPC targets All eyes on Beijing
11:18 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @ExtinctionR
It’s over. At the back of Putin’s mind was always the fact that ZeroCO2 meant the end of his power. Today’s outrage means the end of that project. Unless China turns its back on him, Human civilisation is doomed. This is not a war to reinstate the past, it is against the future.
11:12 AM · Feb 24, 2022· Twitter Web App

Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 1
In response to nonanon1
Unless China can be brought to its senses and persuaded to ditch its fossil-fuel alliance with Putin, we are all stuffed. Any hopes of meeting IPPC CO2 targets are doomed and with them Human Civilisation.
The question is not how insane is Putin, but whether China realises the consequences of his insanity.
View discussion

Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 11:10
At the back of Putin’s mind was always the fact that ZeroCO2 meant the end of his power. Today’s outrage means the end of that project. Unless China turns its back on him, Human civilisation is doomed.
This is not a war to reinstate the past, it is one against the future.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
At the back of Putin’s mind was always the fact that ZeroCO2 meant the end of his power. Today’s outrage means the end of that project. Unless China turns its back on him, Human civilisation is doomed. This is not a war to reinstate the past, it is one against the future.
11:09 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

23/02/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @OzKaterji
The biggest consequence (of the Ukrainian war) is the end of any global effort to combat Climate change. Climate Wars were always predicted, but not in such minute detail, and Putin’s denialism is as much a matter of record as Trump’s. Between them they have done for Human civilisation.
10:53 PM · Feb 23, 2022·Twitter Web App

Fighting the threat from Putin will take teamwork. But who trusts Johnson’s Britain?
23 Feb 2022 21:09
In response to OneTanahMerah
Reported what suited them.
Not much of this:
Jeremy Corbyn 12th March 2018.
‘There have been more than £800,000 of donations to the Conservative party from Russian oligarchs and their associates. If that is the evidence before the Government, they could be taking action to introduce new financial sanctions powers even before the investigation into Salisbury is complete.
But instead they are currently resisting Labour’s amendments to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill that could introduce the so-called Magnitsky powers. Will the Prime Minister agree today to back those amendments?’
Hansard.
View discussion

Fighting the threat from Putin will take teamwork. But who trusts Johnson’s Britain?
23 Feb 2022 21:02
Judging by Yesterday in Parliament, Johnson’s sanctions dithering could cost him more 1922 committee letters than Partygate.
Ranks of assorted tory MPs queueing up to knock lumps off him. Not one word in defence of his tepid response to Russian aggression (except from the obligatory tame minister..
It was as if they had been straining at the leash to castigate Londongrad for years, and now was their chance.
View discussion

LittleRichardjohn
If you’re clinically vulnerable in England, Johnson’s ‘new normal’ is a kick in the teeth
23 Feb 2022 11:40
In response to river1993

We had an epidemic of mental illness for decades before Covid. Strange how the so-called libertarians didn’t worry about that then. Or, more tellingly, ask why people were so sick. This lack of curiosity is of course completely natural. To ask the question would be to reveal the reason, namely that the consumerism they defend to the hilt is a sick system which creates sick people. One which does not value human life, just wealth and power – when it is not actually spawning a range of zoonotic pathogens via its eco-cidal industrial practices. And yet they still persist in dragging us all down this dark alley to be mugged again by catastrophic climate change and all the diseases of consumerism, from cancer to the next Novel Virus.
Reply

22/02/2022

The west knows the cost of appeasement. We can’t rule out any option for stopping Putin
22 Feb 2022 12:48
Putin’s warmongering has presented progressive politics with an opportunity for both promoting Western cooperation and cutting CO2 emissions. Both long overdue and inevitable in the long-term.
When Russian gas supplies to Europe end, Western allies should share reserves. It will mean reduced per capita consumption, but this had to happen sooner or later. Now’s as good a time as any to start.
In retrospect, Russian expansionism and its search for new fossil fuel markets in China was always a reaction to Western ‘threats’ to achieve Zero CO2 emissions. Ukraine is a Gas War.
It’s no coincidence that Putin’s declaration of war came the day after the Chinese Olympics ended. As predicted a month ago. So much for the sneering at Western intelligence.
When will certain stuck-in-the-mud elements realise that Iraq was a long time and several satellites ago? And that their energies should be directed to take geo-political advantage of Putin’s madness rather than carping on his behalf..
View discussion

14/02/2022

The Stasi Poetry Circle review – East Germany’s unsettling war with words
14 Feb 2022 12:49
In response to WoodWorker2008
Yes it is right.
Neo-feudalist Stalinist Russia used precisely the same methods of oppression as the Spanish Inquisition. See the trial of Galileo for reference.
No charges, just the question ‘Do you know why you are here?’ – As in Room 101.
Socialism is a dynamic model based entirely on cooperation – the fundamental human instinct of Social Reciprocal Altruism which predates all property-based power-structures, and still survived in unspoilt cultures until invasion by industrialised slavery capitalism. (Ask captains Cooke & Blye)

“The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.
And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.
…Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. .”
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/fun.html

The only deluded ‘creators of Utopia’ are the apologists for modern Consumerism. The deranged toxic cult which has inflicted untold Wars, Plagues and Famines, and is now abut to devastate civilisation.
View discussion

Tags: , , , ,

Fat Is the New Famine

The government is proposing that the NHS should be able to carry out stomach surgery on obese children. Why is there so much obesity, and what is it for?
Before technology became as prolifically productive as it is now, one of the main weapons for ennervating the masses was shortage. Up to a certain point, a hungry workforce is a compliant workforce.
But hunger is no longer a viable tool in a world which is not only conspicuously capable of easily feeding everyone adequately, but also relies on consumption to preserve the economic structure. So instead, the masses are made too fat to walk, let alone man the barricades. Fat is the new famine.
So the answer is no, spending NHS money on patching up the casualties of this economic fact of life is pointless and a waste of resources. It cannot succeed and does not address the causes of the terrible disability of consumption.
The Politics of Diet and Obesity

08/08/08 China – The Opera.

2008

No-one was going to be really surprised by the superiority of Chinese orchestration and mass choreography. But this was a production with some style and no cheesiness. Possibly the least laughable Olympic opening ceremony ever. Scary, some might even say.
The scale of the show managed to capture the scale of Chinese history and achievements and be visually stunning and mysterious. The general story being that China invented everything; that it is the senior civilisation, beating the other whippersnappers by thousands of years; and that it achieved all this through constant, ruthless Harmony in the Confucian tradition. No mention of Mao anywhere.
 Militaristic drumming, booful ickle kiddies in red frocks, flourescent flying spirits of the air and earth and fire and the glorious proletariat followed each other through the endless generations of firework-lit Chinese Time. Animism came and went. Buddhism arrived in a flourish of silk. Writing and paper and printing were scrolled out in an epic gleaming claim to global intellectual rights, patents and copyright. After a bizarre burst of Laughing On Command, the dancers lined up obediently behind Men In Black manipulating puppets.. What did that mean? And the depiction of Chinese pioneering navigators (well before anyone else, naturally) with scores of oars flailed by strong men in unison could only trigger one response in anyone who’s ever seen Ben Hur. Slavery, which wasn’t on the agenda at central committee planning. But this is China, slavery of one sort or another was and still is essential to its economy and success.
 There was very little to represent the New Fantasy China of liberty and unfettered exchange across borders, in spite of all the promises. Overall, the message was that China is essentially the same now that it was 5,000 years ago. The same doctrine of Peace and Prosperity through Unity and Harmony. An unconquerable regime built on the most stable of power structures, the pyramid. The constant glorification of the feudal past and its achievements cannot be brushed off as sentimentality, they mean it to continue, but with the help of the modern technologies and financial black magic of Wall Street and Canary Wharf. In return China is offering its political Wisdom of the Ages as a possible future model for the unstable, feverish west. You too can be immortal. All you need is to surrender to ‘Harmony’.
 Orwell once described fascism as adopting from socialism only those aspects which were useful for the purposes of war. Chinese feudalism initially adopted those same aspects, now it chooses to cherry-pick from Consumerism instead.
———————————————————————————————

The Lost Memorials of Giorgianus Bruno

‘The only thing ever officially condemned or banned during the benificent reign of the great leader Themystoclot of Decron was a portrait of himself painted by his ex wife, Desdezine, who he knew was plotting to kill him, and who he hated with such venom that after her sudden, fortuitous death from anthrax at the age of eighteen, he declared a whole year of national holiday, during which time no taxes were paid.
As a civic warning, he mounted her rotting body in lead hoops above the gates of the city for all to see, and made of her brains a delicate stew. This he forced her twelve private advisors and co-conspirators to eat at a great public banquet.
After they all subsequently died of the anthrax, their corpses were cremated and the ashes baked into the lining bricks for the new public latrines in the city square.
The perverse result of these acts of spite was the idolisation of Desdezine in the public memory as the cause of both the year without taxes, and the eradication of cholera from the city, which had been a regular visitor until Themystoclot’s sanitary works were completed.
Within two generations the adoration of Desdezine had grown beyond that of the ancient gods of Decron, and its priests held all power in the land. Worshippers held a meniscial sacrifice of pigs, whose blood was poured into the latrines in a ritual cleansing. Thereafter, the pig became generically associated with Themystoclot. until eventually the original Gallian ‘dsem’ (pig) became corrupted to ‘them’, which remained the word in usage until swine were cleansed from the land by the Moorish covenant.
Other than this indignity, the king’s name and works were utterly forgotten. This was the immortality granted to Themystoclot by his grateful subjects for his benign rule.
Of the painting nothing more is known.’

‘We Come Along on Saturday Morning.’

‘We Come Along on Saturday Morning.’

Or as we used to sing at the tops of our voices:

‘We come along on Saturday morning
Greeting everybody with a smile.
We come along on Saturday morning
Knowing it’s well worth while.

As members of The Odeon Club we all intend to be
Good citizens when we grow up and Champions of the Free!

We come along on Saturday morning
Greeting everybody with a smile.
Smile!
Smile!!
Greeting everybody with a smile.

And then settle down to a morning of combined cowboys and horseplay and tribal score-settling. The crew from Copperworks and New Dock always vastly out-muscled anything we could produce. And Felinfoel was itself a divided force anyway, so there was no real hope but camouflage for the few of us who used to make the trip from Llethri Road.

After the anthem of the Odeon Saturday Cinema club, the programme began. Cartoons, comedy short, serial, feature. Popeye, Woody Woodpecker or Loony Tunes; Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy; Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey or Buck Rogers; British or Canadian Film Foundation black and white or Disney colour melodrama. Often involving a dog. Everything flickering through a storm of chatter and fighting and shouts at the movie and at opponents above, behind and in front, all bombarding each other with missiles of some kind, especially in ‘the talking’. ‘What was the picture like?’ –  ‘All talking..’. The stench and crunch of popcorn.
We survived. And if we were careful, we could hide in the toilets until the first afternoon matinee started, watch it for free, and stagger out into the mid-afternoon blinking like owls.
The Odeon in Llanelli was the newest and grandest of the five cinemas still operating at the time: The Regal, Palace, Hippodrome (‘Haggers’) and The Llanelly Cinema had all closed by the mid ’70’s, but I haunted them all in their day.
This devotion paid off in the shape of one of my first paid jobs. To act as courier for the Odeon’s foyer and display board posters from the graphic artist in Cardiff to the manager’s office in the cinema. Somehow he had heard of a trip I was making to a rugby international, and could get the poster back faster and cheaper than using the post.
I had never realised that the posters were done by hand. They would be worth serious money now.
I was paid in free seats for a month.

The greatest binge of all was the Hippodrome’s cheap summer season of 1962. Someone at ‘Hagger’s’ had got a bulk deal and was putting on four double bills a week, changing on Wednesdays. Including my regular Saturday movie, I must has seen over twenty movies in four weeks, including William Castle’s 1960 cult 3D micro-classic ‘13 Ghosts’, with an introduction by a solemn professor behind a desk who instructed us how to use the 3D specs to see ghosts in dark rooms, The results from our primitive, unlit primary school toilets were inconclusive.

From ‘The Man Who Lived In A Haystack.

‘DIGITAL TV CHOICE’ (Tribune 1999)

“The fastest generation of technological change since fire.” is how Alan McCulloch of Saatchi & Saatchi described the imminent explosion in digital communications. Richard Eyre’s “communicopia” of choice will be an empowering force for consumers, enabling them to create their own virtual TV channels, with all their favourite viewing stored ready for use whenever needed. With the marriage of delivery systems and content offered by internet convergence, ‘sit back’, one-way TV will end. People will watch what they want to watch.
Increasing numbers of media industry representatives are also predicting that the technology will soon be available to enable viewers to abolish advertising from personal schedules. They also predict that we will not be allowed to use it.
The feasibility of this ‘time-shifting’ technology is not seriously in question: “Within 2 – 3 years, using a ‘Q-Dot’ or similar recognition system.” says Nick Thomas of Bell Pottinger Good Relations (PR to Phillips electronics.)

“It is very likely that in 5-7 years advanced TV systems will include time-shifting systems.” says Mike Kroll, principal researcher in multi-media and networking at the BBC’s Bletchley Park-style research unit at Kingswood Warren in Surrey.

However, its implementation is in doubt. Ray Kelly, chair of the media policy group for the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising, injects the first note of caution:
“It should worry advertisers, but they’re not aware of the technology.”
After being made aware, David Sanderson, director of digital sales at Carlton Digital admitted that with enough take-up, ‘time-shifting’ or ‘AdZAp’ systems “could represent a major disaster, with a downward spiral in advertising revenues.” The industry would therefore “lobby very hard to prevent such a thing from happening.” After all, there would be “little justification for the industry to allow a technology which would put them out of business.”
Roy Addison of Pearson was another who didn’t believe it was “in the industry’s interests to alert the public to such a function.” From promises of limitless bounty to threats of product suppression in three easy accounting stages. In the name of free market ‘Individual Choice’ – real choice for real individuals – will be compromised. So new?
The Adam Smith Institute was also baffled.
“That’s quite a ‘Catch 22’” admitted their press office. Adding “The technology is almost killing itself.” The A.S.I. would certainly condemn any industry restrictions on ‘AdZAp’ as a restriction of choice, but still stuck to its principles that:
a) What’s good for industry is good for the people.
b) Industry must be allowed to defend its interests.
To add to this chaos, the argument is also re-emerging that commercials are a sort of public service. As well as being entertaining and pretty, they are also informational and educational. Mmm! Delicious AND Nutritious! “People like advertising” and “The public are too apathetic to bother creating their own schedules” I was repeatedly assured. See that Royle Family? That’s you that is.
Even more insulting, watching TV advertising is almost promoted as a civic duty. Because it promotes consumer spending, TV advertising plays a vital cohesive role in our society. Suppressing its dissemination therefore threatens the general good, and must be opposed. In the Middle Ages we had compulsory church attendance, now we have Pot Noodles.
Another defence is the ‘Right of commercial free speech’ recently cited by the advertising industry in its losing battle with the Swedish decision to ban advertising to kids.
So who would want to upset this delicate socio/economic balance by using an ‘AdZAp’ system? How would any manufacturer find a market for such a thing? By calling Alan McCulloch for a start. “I would certainly like one.” he whispered before urging the industry to adapt in order to survive. “TV advertising has to become more interactive. The agencies are failing to create new forms. Their heads are still stuck up their arses doing TV ads.”
In practice this includes abandoning the linear cinematic commercial for the computer game format. ‘Adgames’ could last as long as the player played, and could offer rewards in the form of bonus points or star prizes. The best ads would be the best games, and the ultimate game would be the one which replaced programming entirely. Which solves the problem of influencing children, but what of discriminating viewers such as Mr. McCulloch, who sees “the clever techniques used to influence children” at first hand and therefore appreciates the “very strong case for restricting children’s advertising.”?
And what of the Consumer Society agnostics? The ones who caused all that fuss in Seattle. How will they be prevented from getting the TV they want?
Amid the confusion two things are absolutely clear. Firstly, future TiVo systems and internet bandwidths will make independence from corporate TV scheduling achievable to those who want it. And secondly: if fire has indeed been rediscovered then we must play with it. The woolly mammoths of the media industry would rather we stayed shivering in our caves, but this is just as unlikely now as it was the first time around.
In future the media industry will have to cater for an audience which increasingly knows what it wants, and which has the technology to get it. Java based Software plug-ins such as AdZap will be available (probably free) via the internet, downloading them to your home terminal will be the work of a few minutes, and once there they will work invisibly to remove advertising, or any other definable content. And let’s face it, who would miss it? Then who would pay for it? And how would the companies which depend on it survive? Survival for the BBC seems a simple matter of charging the world to see its back catalogue on the internet, and abolishing the licence fee. But for commercial TV, the future is more problematic.
It would seem that the industry is faced with as many threats as opportunities. It will also have to deal on level terms with human emotions which until now it has merely exploited. Consumers will be aware of the power at their disposal, and very aware of when it is denied them.
In this new buyer’s market for tv, suckers will become clients, with corresponding expectations of service. The one-way, intrusive TV commercial – cheeky monkeys, supermodels, soap-opera plots and all – looks doomed in a market which doesn’t want its’ films interrupted every twenty minutes by images of supermodels in flourescent underwear. The difficulty is that the evangelists of the free market, those who think the BBC is ‘pure socialism’, may find the consequences of a genuinely free market in TV too much to allow. Amid the blur of the digital revolution, some things never change. If Tony Blair wants to ‘root out reactonary elements’, he should look no further than his new friends in the media industry.
•••

Addendum. 23/10/08
‘Will Ad-Skipping Kill Television?’ 

WORD DUSTBIN 2: ‘LEFT’ AND ‘RIGHT’

In every newspaper and website the political squabbling drags on, and two words are largely guilty of miring it in the muck. In every newspaper and website the political squabbling drags on, and two words are largely guilty of miring it in the muck. 
The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ are infamously the most meaningless terms in the universe. As useful as ‘Up’ and ‘Down’ are in outer space. They refer to nothing but themselves, and anything else they describe becomes just as meaningless. This makes them supremely unsuitable as political language, where clarity is critical.
Almost any terms are clearer. They only serve to prevent clear political analysis. Nobody can explain the difference between their ‘left’ and ‘right’ hands, let alone identify marker-posts on the modern political spectrum. Not to mention erasing the millennia of emotive associations which they have acquired, since the Last Supper – at least.
They are useful merely as names for the two ends of a false, bilaterally-symmetrical spectrum. One which conveniently equates fascism with socialism. But politics is not symmetrical. ‘Reactionary’ and ‘Progressive’ are at least real words which make an attempt at description.
It is possible for political debate to focus on the real political divide between ‘progressive’ and ‘reactionary’ values. The line is still fairly clear between those who believe in the distribution of power and wealth, and those who believe in its centralisation. Between equality and privilege. By these relatively objective standards, ‘Left’ and ‘right’ are pure gibberish. A childish anthropomorphic fantasy of a political world which can be balanced symmetrically in either hand. In which fascism is conveniently just the same as socialism, and Stalin is a socialist.
The origins of the terms in the French Revolution have been blurred by the requirement that socialism and fascism be depicted as embodying the same values, dedicated to the same goals. The effects of this delusion are everywhere from the pages of the Telegraph to the humblest blog.
As a species, we do like symmetry, especially when it revolves around us. The medieval geocentric universe reflected this need, and just like the ‘Left – Right’ political model, was obsolete, absurd, misleading and a shackle on free thought and discussion.
It is merely co-incidental, I suppose, that ‘Right’ also happens to mean ‘correct’. Its disciples are literally more ‘adroit’. And that ‘left’ is ‘sinister’, ‘gauche’, ‘cackhanded’ and very wrong. The direction of the Damned in all Christian iconography. Christ sits on God’s Right Hand. Judas sat on Christ’s left. The penitent thief was crucified on Christ’s right hand. The list is endless.
So even the argument that symmetry = objectivity does not hold water. Belief in the desirability of the egalitarian possibilities of technological advance is demonised; whereas the morbid, neurotic need to use the past as validation for an existing hierarchy is made normal.
At times like these, we should know what the words we use mean and do.


See other negative associations:
‘left behind’. ‘left-over’.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is rightwrong-potatoes-jpeg.jpg

Useful Orwell Perspectives

Neglected Orwell passages for the connoisseur.
(e.g. Principles of Newspeak)
(Extracts given titles which seemed appropriate.)

Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
Chapter 1. Ignorance is Strength
‘Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have varied from age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.
The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable….’
MORE

‘Second Thoughts on James Burnham.‘
(Hints of Musk and Cyber-tyranny.)
(Burnham) “..seems to assume that power hunger, although only dominant in comparatively few people, is a natural instinct that does not have to be explained, like the desire for food. He also assumes that the division of society into classes serves the same purpose in all ages. This is practically to ignore the history of hundreds of years. When Burnham’s master, Machiavelli, was writing, class divisions were not only unavoidable, but desirable. So long as methods of production were primitive, the great mass of the people were necessarily tied down to dreary, exhausting manual labour: and a few people had to be set free from such labour, otherwise civilisation could not maintain itself, let alone make any progress. But since the arrival of the machine the whole pattern has altered. The justification for class distinctions, if there is a justification, is no longer the same, because there is no mechanical reason why the average human being should continue to be a drudge. True, drudgery persists; class distinctions are probably re-establishing themselves in a new form, and individual liberty is on the down-grade: but as these developments are now technically avoidable, they must have some psychological cause which Burnham makes no attempt to discover. The question that he ought to ask, and never does ask, is: Why does the lust for naked power become a major human motive exactly now, when the dominion of man over man is ceasing to be necessary? As for the claim that ‘human nature’, or ‘inexorable laws’ of this and that, make Socialism impossible, it is simply a projection of the past into the future. In effect, Burnham argues that because a society of free and equal human beings has never existed, it never can exist. By the same argument one could have demonstrated the impossibility of aeroplanes in 1900, or of motor cars in 1850.
The notion that the machine has altered human relationships, and that in consequence Machiavelli is out of date, is a very obvious one. If Burnham fails to deal with it, it can, I think, only be because his own power instinct leads him to brush aside any suggestion that the Machiavellian world of force, fraud, and tyranny may somehow come to an end. It is important to bear in mind what I said above: that Burnham’s theory is only a variant — an American variant, and interesting because of its comprehensiveness — of the power worship now so prevalent among intellectuals. A more normal variant, at any rate in England, is Communism. “
1946

Europe. (‘the only worth-while political objective ‘)
‘Most of the dangers that I have outlined existed and were foreseeable long before the atomic bomb was invented. The only way of avoiding them that I can imagine is to present somewhere or other, on a large scale, the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area. But the only area in which it could conceivably be made to work, in any near future, is Western Europe. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, the tradition of democratic Socialism can only be said to exist — even there it only exists precariously — in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Spain, and Italy.
Only in those countries are there still large numbers of people to whom the word ‘Socialism’ has some appeal, and for whom it is bound up with liberty, equality, and internationalism. Elsewhere it either has no foot-hold or it means something different. In North America the masses are contented with capitalism, and one cannot tell what turn they will take when capitalism begins to collapse. In the U.S.S.R. there prevails a sort of oligarchical collectivism which could only develop into democratic Socialism against the will of the ruling minority. Into Asia even the word ‘Socialism’ has barely penetrated. The Asiatic nationalist movements are either Fascist in character, or look towards Moscow, or manage to combine both attitudes: and at present all movements among the coloured peoples are tinged by racial mysticism. In most of South America the position is essentially similar, so is it in Africa and the Middle East.
Socialism does not exist anywhere, but even as an idea it is at present valid only in Europe. Of course, Socialism cannot properly be said to be established until it is world-wide, but the process must begin somewhere, and I cannot imagine it beginning except through the federation of the western European states, transformed into Socialist republics without colonial dependencies. Therefore a Socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only worth-while political objective today.
Such a federation would contain about 250 million people, including perhaps half the skilled industrial workers of the world. I do not need to be told that the difficulties of bringing any such thing into being are enormous and terrifying, and I will list some of them in a moment. But we ought not to feel that it is of its nature impossible, or that countries so different from one another would not voluntarily unite. A western European union is in itself a less improbable concatenation than the Soviet Union or the British Empire.’
‘Towards European Unity’.

***

Brexit Echoes. Tribune 1947.
“…So also with the Poles. The thing that most depressed me in the above-mentioned conversation was the recurrent phrase, ‘let them go back to their own country’. If I had said to those two businessmen, ‘Most of these people have no country to go back to’, they would have gaped. Not one of the relevant facts would have been known to them. They would never have heard of the various things that have happened to Poland since 1939, any more than they would have known that the over-population of Britain is a fallacy or that local unemployment can coexist with a general shortage of labour.
I think it is a mistake to give such people the excuse of ignorance. You can’t actually change their feelings, but you can make them understand what they are saying when they demand that homeless refugees shall be driven from our shores, and the knowledge may make them a little less actively malignant.”

IMMIGRATION
“The fact is that there is strong popular feeling in this country against foreign immigration. It arises from simple xenophobia, partly from fear of undercutting in wages, but above all from the out-of-date notion that Britain is overpopulated and that more population means more unemployment.”

IMMIGRATION 2
“In the end it is doubtful whether we can solve our problems without encouraging immigration from Europe. In a tentative way the Government has already tried to do this, only to be met by ignorant hostility, because the public has not been told the relevant facts beforehand. So also with countless other unpopular things that will have to be done from time to time.”
But the most necessary step is not to prepare public opinion for particular emergencies, but to raise the general level of political understanding: above all, to drive home the fact, which has never been properly grasped, that British prosperity depends largely on factors outside Britain.”
AS I PLEASE. TRIBUNE 1946

***

REACTIONARY STRAWMEN ARGUMENTS
” The thing that is common to all these people…is their refusal to believe that human society can be fundamentally improved. Man is non-perfectible, merely political changes can effect nothing, progress is an illusion. The connexion between this belief and political reaction is, of course, obvious. Other-worldliness is the best alibi a rich man can have. ‘Men cannot be made better by act of Parliament; therefore I may as well go on drawing my dividends.’
No one puts it quite so coarsely as that, but the thought of all these people is along those lines: even of those who, like Michael Roberts and Hulme himself, admit that a little, just a little, improvement in earthly society may be thinkable.
The danger of ignoring the neo-pessimists lies in the fact that up to a point they are right. So long as one thinks in short periods it is wise not to be hopeful about the future. Plans for human betterment do normally come unstuck, and the pessimist has many more opportunities of saying ‘I told you so’ than the optimist. By and large the prophets of doom have been righter than those who imagined that a real step forward would be achieved by universal education, female suffrage, the League of Nations, or what not.
The real answer is to dissociate Socialism from Utopianism. Nearly all neo-pessimist apologetics consist in putting up a man of straw and knocking him down again. The man of straw is called Human Perfectibility. Socialists are accused of believing that society can be—and indeed, after the establishment of Socialism, will be—completely perfect; also that progress is inevitable. Debunking such beliefs is money for jam, of course.
The answer, which ought to be uttered more loudly than it usually is, is that Socialism is not perfectionist, perhaps not even hedonistic. Socialists don’t claim to be able to make the world perfect: they claim to be able to make it better. And any thinking Socialist will concede to the Catholic that when economic injustice has been righted, the fundamental problem of man’s place in the universe will still remain. But what the Socialist does claim is that that problem cannot be dealt with while the average human being’s preoccupations are necessarily economic. It is all summed up in Marx’s saying that after Socialism has arrived, human history can begin.
Meanwhile the neo-pessimists are there, well entrenched in the press of every country in the world, and they have more influence and make more converts among the young than we sometimes care to admit.
AS I PLEASE. TRIBUNE. 1943

***

Understanding Hitler (Review of Mein Kampf)
‘It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism.
Then suddenly it turned out that Hitler was not respectable after all. As one result of this, Hurst and Blackett’s edition was reissued in a new jacket explaining that all profits would be devoted to the Red Cross. Nevertheless, simply on the internal evidence of Mein Kampf, it is difficult to believe that any real change has taken place in Hitler’s aims and opinions. When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics. Probably, in Hitler’s own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention of smashing England afterwards.
Now, as it has turned out, England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the more easily bribed of the two. But Russia’s turn will come when England is out of the picture – that, no doubt, is how Hitler sees it. Whether it will turn out that way is of course a different question.
Suppose that Hitler’s programme could be put into effect. What he envisages, a hundred years hence, is a continuous state of 250 million Germans with plenty of “living room” (i.e. stretching to Afghanistan or thereabouts), a horrible brainless empire in which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder. How was it that he was able to put this monstrous vision across? It is easy to say that at one stage of his career he was financed by the heavy industrialists who saw in him the man who would smash the Socialists and Communists. They would not have backed him, however if he had not talked a great movement into existence already. Again, the situation in Germany, with its seven million unemployed, was obviously favourable for demagogues. But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches .[passage below cut from online versions. Published in CELJ 1968]
I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power – until then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter – I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity.“
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html
“The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs – and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself.
The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.
Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers: tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.
The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples.
Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them ” I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ” Greatest happiness of the greatest number ” is a good slogan, but at this moment “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.”
Review of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (1940)

***

Notes on Nationalism
“Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one’s own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.
… Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world.”

Politics and the English Language.
“As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house…
When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — ‘jackboot’, ‘Achilles’ heel’, ‘hotbed’, ‘melting pot’, ‘acid test’, ‘veritable inferno’, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.”

***

‘Rudyard Kipling‘
‘But because he identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which ‘enlightened’ people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible.
We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’.
It is true that Kipling does not understand the economic aspect of the relationship between the highbrow and the blimp. He does not see that the map is painted red chiefly in order that the coolie may be exploited. Instead of the coolie he sees the Indian Civil Servant; but even on that plane his grasp of function, of who protects whom, is very sound. He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.’

***

The BBC
‘I believe that the B.B.C., in spite of the stupidity of its foreign propaganda and the unbearable voices of its announcers, is very truthful. It is generally regarded here as more reliable than the press.’
London Letter to Partisan Review
London NW8
15 April 1941

***

BBC Vs Print
IN A LETTER published in this week’s Tribune, someone attacks me rather violently for saying that the B.B.C. is a better source of news than the daily papers, and is so regarded by the public. I have never, he suggests, heard ordinary working men shouting ‘Turn that dope off! ‘when the news bulletin comes on.
On the contrary, I have heard this frequently. Still more frequently I have seen the customers in a pub go straight on with their darts, music and so forth without the slightest slackening of noise when the news bulletin began. But it was not my claim that anyone likes the B.B.C., or thinks it interesting, or grown-up, or democratic, or progressive. I said only that people regard it as a relatively sound source of news. Again and again I have known people, when they see some doubtful item of news, wait to have it confirmed by the radio before they believe it. Social surveys show the same thing—i.e. that as against the radio the prestige of newspapers has declined.
And I repeat what I said before—that in my experience the B.B.C. is relatively truthful and, above all, has a responsible attitude towards news and does not disseminate lies simply because they are ‘newsy’.
Of course, untrue statements are constantly being broadcast and anyone can tell you of instances. But in most cases this is due to genuine error, and the B.B.C. sins much more by simply avoiding anything controversial than by direct propaganda. And after all—a point not met by our correspondent—its reputation abroad is comparatively high. Ask any refugee from Europe which of the belligerent radios is considered to be the most truthful. So also in Asia. Even in India, where the population are so hostile that they will not listen to British propaganda and will hardly listen to a British entertainment programme, they listen to B.B.C. news because they believe that it approximates to the truth.
Even if the B.B.C. passes on the British official lies, it does make some effort to sift the others. Most of the newspapers, for instance, have continued to publish without any query as to their truthfulness the American claims to have sunk the entire Japanese fleet several times over. The B.B.C., to my knowledge, developed quite early on an attitude of suspicion towards this and certain other unreliable sources. On more than one occasion I have known a newspaper to print a piece of news—and news unfavourable to Britain—on no other authority than the German radio, because it was ‘newsy’ and made a good ‘para’.
If you see something obviously untruthful in a newspaper and ring up to ask ‘Where did you get that from?’ you are usually put off with the formula: ‘I’m afraid Mr So-and-So is not in the office.’ If you persist, you generally find that the story has no basis whatever but that it looked like a good bit of news, so in it went. Except where libel is involved, the average journalist is astonished and even contemptuous if anyone bothers about accuracy with regard to names, dates, figures and other details. And any daily journalist will tell you that one of the most important secrets of his trade is the trick of making it appear that there is news when there is no news.
As I Please. Tribune 21 April 1944.

***

Original Sin
“AN argument that Socialists ought to be prepared to meet, since it is brought up constantly both by Christian apologists and by neo-pessimists such as James Burnham, is the alleged immutability of ‘human nature’.
Socialists are accused—I think without justification—of assuming that Man is perfectible, and it is then pointed out that human history is in fact one long tale of greed, robbery and oppression. Man, it is said, will always try to get the better of his neighbour, he will always hog as much property as possible for himself and his family. Man is of his nature sinful, and cannot be made virtuous by Act of Parliament. Therefore, though economic exploitation can be controlled to some extent, the classless society is for ever impossible.
The proper answer, it seems to me, is that this argument belongs to the Stone Age. It presupposes that material goods will always be desperately scarce. The power hunger of human beings does indeed present a serious problem, but there is no reason for thinking that the greed for mere wealth is a permanent human characteristic.
We are selfish in economic matters because we all live in terror of poverty. But when a commodity is not scarce, no one tries to grab more than his fair share of it. No one tries to make a corner in air, for instance. The millionaire as well as the beggar is content with just so much air as he can breathe. Or, again, water. In this country we are not troubled by lack of water. If anything we have too much of it, especially on Bank Holidays. As a result water hardly enters into our consciousness. Yet in dried-up countries like North Africa, what jealousies, what hatreds, what appalling crimes the lack of water can cause!
So also with any other kind of goods. If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. And after all, if human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don’t practise cannibalism any longer, but don’t even want to?’

As I Please 1944

***

Pacifism
‘For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don’t take the sword perish by smelly diseases.
The fact that such a platitude is worth writing down shows what the years of rentier capitalism have done to us.’
‘Looking Back on The Spanish War’

***

Ghandi, Pacifism and the Sanctity of Life
‘Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: “What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?” I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the “you’re another” type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer’s Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi’s view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.’
Reflections on Ghandi

Looking back on the Spanish War – (‘Post-Truth‘)
‘Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘Science’. There is only ‘German Science’, ‘Jewish Science’, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.’

‘In Front of Your Nose’ – Credulity
“Somewhere or other—I think it is in the preface to Saint Joan—Bernard Shaw remarks that we are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and as an example of modern credulity he cites the widespread belief that the earth is round. The average man, says Shaw, can advance not a single reason for thinking that the earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth-century mentality.
Now, Shaw is exaggerating, but there is something in what he says, and the question is worth following up, for the sake of the light it throws on modern knowledge. Just why do we believe that the earth is round? I am not speaking of the few thousand astronomers, geographers and so forth who could give ocular proof, or have a theoretical knowledge of the proof, but of the ordinary newspaper-reading citizen, such as you or me.
As for the Flat Earth theory, I believe I could refute it. If you stand by the seashore on a clear day, you can see the masts and funnels of invisible ships passing along the horizons. This phenomenon can only be explained by assuming that the earth’s surface is curved. But it does not follow that the earth is spherical. Imagine another theory called the Oval Earth theory, which claims that the earth is shaped like an egg. What can I say against it?
Against the Oval Earth man, the first card I can play is the analogy of the sun and moon. The Oval Earth man promptly answers that I don’t know, by my own observation, that those bodies are spherical. I only know that they are round, and they may perfectly well be flat discs. I have no answer to that one. Besides, he goes on, what reason have I for thinking that the earth must be the same shape as the sun and moon? I can’t answer that one either.
My second card is the earth’s shadow: when cast on the moon during eclipses, it appears to be the shadow of a round object. But how do I know, demands the Oval Earth man, that eclipses of the moon are caused by the shadow of the earth? The answer is that I don’t know, but have taken this piece of information blindly from newspaper articles and science booklets.
Defeated in the minor exchanges, I now play my queen of trumps: the opinion of the experts. The Astronomer Royal, who ought to know, tells me that the earth is round. The Oval Earth man covers the queen with his king. Have I tested the Astronomer Royal’s statement, and would I even know a way of testing it? Here I bring out my ace. Yes, I do know one test. The astronomers can foretell eclipses, and this suggests that their opinions about the solar system are pretty sound. I am therefore justified in accepting their say-so about the shape of the earth.
If the Oval Earth man answers—what I believe is true—that the ancient Egyptians, who thought the sun goes round the earth, could also predict eclipses, then bang goes my ace. I have only one card left: navigation. People can sail ships round the world, and reach the places they aim at, by calculations which assume that the earth is spherical. I believe that finishes the Oval Earth man, though even then he may possibly have some kind of counter.
It will be seen that my reasons for thinking that the earth is round are rather precarious ones. Yet this is an exceptionally elementary piece of information. On most other questions I should have to fall back on the expert much earlier, and would be less able to test his pronouncements. And much the greater part of our knowledge is at this level. It does not rest on reasoning or on experiment, but on authority. And how can it be otherwise, when the range of knowledge is so vast that the expert himself is an ignoramus as soon as he strays away from his own speciality? Most people, if asked to prove that the earth is round, would not even bother to produce the rather weak arguments I have outlined above. They would start off by saying that ’everyone knows’ the earth to be round, and if pressed further, would become angry. In a way Shaw is right. This is a credulous age, and the burden of knowledge which we now have to carry is partly responsible.
As I Please

***

Metric
Another thing I am against in advance—for it is bound to be suggested sooner or later—is the complete scrapping of our present system of weights and measures.
Obviously you have got to have the metric system for certain purposes. For scientific work it has long been in use, and it is also needed for tools and machinery, especially if you want to export them. But there is a strong case for keeping on the old measurements for use in everyday life. One reason is that the metric system does not possess, or has not succeeded in establishing, a large number of units that can be visualized. There is, for instance, effectively no unit between the metre, which is more than a yard, and the centimetre, which is less than half an inch. In English you can describe someone as being five feet three inches high, or five feet nine inches, or six feet one inch, and your bearer will know fairly accurately what you mean. But I have never heard a Frenchman say, ‘He is a hundred and forty-two centimetres high’; it would not convey any visual image. So also with the various other measurements. Rods and acres, pints, quarts and gallons, pounds, stones and hundredweights, are all of them units with which we are intimately familiar, and we should be slightly poorer without them. Actually, in countries where the metric system is in force a few of the old measurements tend to linger on for everyday purposes, although officially discouraged.
There is also the literary consideration, which cannot be left quite out of account. The names of the units in the old system are short homely words which lend themselves to vigorous speech. Putting a quart into a pint pot is a good image, which could hardly be expressed in the metric system. Also, the literature of the past deals only in the old measurements, and many passages would become an irritation if one had to do a sum in arithmetic when one read them, as one does with those tiresome verses in a Russian novel.

The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile
Make lame philosophy to smile:

fancy having to turn that into millimetres!
As I Please

***

The Delusion of Individual Freedom under Totalitarianism
“The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom — that is the idea, more or less. And many people are under the impression that this is going on now in Germany and other dictatorial countries.
Why is this idea false? I pass over the fact that modern dictatorships don’t, in fact, leave the loopholes that the old-fashioned despotisms did; and also the probable weakening of the desire for intellectual liberty owing to totalitarian methods of education. The greatest mistake is to imagine that the human being is an autonomous individual. The secret freedom which you can supposedly enjoy under a despotic government is nonsense, because your thoughts are never entirely your own. Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking. If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up. Had the Germans really got to England my acquaintance of the Cafe Royal would soon have found his painting deteriorating, even if the Gestapo had let him alone. And when the lid is taken off Europe, I believe one of the things that will surprise us will be to find how little worthwhile writing of any kind — even such things as diaries, for instance — has been produced in secret under the dictators.”
As I Please

***

The Absurdity of War.
‘ It is commonly assumed that what human beings want is to be comfortable. Well, we now have it in our power to be comfortable, as our ancestors had not. Nature may occasionally hit back with an earthquake or a cyclone, but by and large she is beaten. And yet exactly at the moment when there is, or could be, plenty of everything for everybody, nearly our whole energies have to be taken up in trying to grab territories, markets and raw materials from one another. Exactly at the moment when wealth might be so generally diffused that no government need fear serious opposition, political liberty is declared to be impossible and half the world is ruled by secret police forces. Exactly at the moment when superstition crumbles and a rational attitude towards the universe becomes feasible, the right to think one’s own thoughts is denied as never before. The fact is that human beings only started fighting one another in earnest when there was no longer anything to fight about. ‘
‘As I Please’ 29/11/1946.

***

Marx and Christ.
“…the claim that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ is one of the stock arguments of intelligent reactionaries. Catholic apologists, in particular, use it almost automatically. Everything that you can say or think has been said or thought before. Every political theory from Liberalism to Trotskyism can be shown to be a development of some heresy in the early Church. Every system of philosophy springs ultimately from the Greeks. Every scientific theory (if we are to believe the popular Catholic press) was anticipated by Roger Bacon and others in the thirteenth century. Some Hindu thinkers go even further and claim that not merely the scientific theories, but the products of applied science as well, aeroplanes, radio and the whole bag of tricks, were known to the ancient Hindus, who afterwards dropped them as being unworthy of their attention.
It is not very difficult to see that this idea is rooted in the fear of progress. If there is nothing new under the sun, if the past in some shape or another always returns, then the future when it comes will be something familiar. At any rate what will never come—since it has never come before—is that hated, dreaded thing, a world of free and equal human beings. Particularly comforting to reactionary thinkers is the idea of a cyclical universe, in which the same chain of events happens over and over again. In such a universe every seeming advance towards democracy simply means that the coming age of tyranny and privilege is a bit nearer. This belief, obviously superstitious though it is, is widely held nowadays, and is common among Fascists and near-Fascists.
In fact, there are new ideas. The idea that an advanced civilization need not rest on slavery is a relatively new idea, for instance: it is a good deal younger than the Christian religion. But even if Chesterton’s dictum were true, it would only be true in the sense that a statue is contained in every block of stone. Ideas may not change, but emphasis shifts constantly. It could be claimed, for example, that the most important part of Marx’s theory is contained in the saying: ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ But before Marx developed it, what force had that saying had? Who had paid any attention to it? Who had inferred from it—what it certainly implies—that laws, religions and moral codes are all a superstructure built over existing property relations? It was Christ, according to the Gospel, who uttered the text, but it was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion—which, of course, is why they hate him so.
As I Please. 25 February 1944

***

‘Why Socialists Don’t believe in Fun’ (1943)’
‘I suggest that the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.
…Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. This is the case even with a great writer like Swift, who can flay a bishop or a politician so neatly, but who, when he tries to create a superman, merely leaves one with the impression the very last he can have intended that the stinking Yahoos had in them more possibility of development than the enlightened Houyhnhnms.”
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/fun.html

***

Via Orwell..
Notebooks of Samuel Butler. ‘Style’
‘I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable. Plato’s having had seventy shies at one sentence is quite enough to explain to me why I dislike him. A man may, and ought to take a great deal of pains to write clearly, tersely and euphemistically: he will write many a sentence three or four times over—to do much more than this is worse than not rewriting at all: he will be at great pains to see that he does not repeat himself, to arrange his matter in the way that shall best enable the reader to master it, to cut out superfluous words and, even more, to eschew irrelevant matter: but in each case he will be thinking not of his own style but of his reader’s convenience.’
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6173/6173-h/6173-h.htm

***

Yeats. (Astrology & Fascism)
‘How do Yeat’s political ideas link up with his leaning towards occultism? It is not clear at first glance why hatred of democracy and a tendency to believe in crystal-gazing should go together. Mr Menon only discusses this rather shortly, but it is possible to make two guesses. To begin with, the theory that civilisation moves in recurring cycles is one way out for people who hate the concept of human equality.
If it is true that “all this”, or something like it, “has happened before”, then science and the modern world are debunked at one stroke and progress becomes for ever impossible. It does not much matter if the lower orders are getting above themselves, for, after all, we shall soon be returning to an age of tyranny. Yeats is by no means alone in this outlook. If the universe is moving round on a wheel, the future must be foreseeable, perhaps even in some detail. It is merely a question of discovering the laws of its motion, as the early astronomers discovered the solar year. Believe that, and it becomes difficult not to believe in astrology or some similar system.
A year before the war, examining a copy of Gringoire, the French Fascist weekly, much read by army officers, I found in it no less than thirty-eight advertisements of clairvoyants. Secondly, the very concept of occultism carries with it the idea that knowledge must be a secret thing, limited to a small circle of initiates. But the same idea is integral to Fascism. Those who dread the prospect of universal suffrage, popular education, freedom of thought, emancipation of women, will start off with a predilection towards secret cults. There is another link between Fascism and magic in the profound hostility of both to the Christian ethical code.’
‘http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/yeats/english/e_yeats

***

Swift Anarchism & Orthodoxy
‘Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels is a picture of an anarchistic Society, not governed by law in the ordinary sense, but by the dictates of ‘Reason’, which arc voluntarily accepted by everyone. The General Assembly of the Houyhnhnms ‘exhorts’ Gulliver’s master to get rid of him, and his neighbours put pressure on him to make him comply. Two reasons are given. One is that the presence of this unusual Yahoo may unsettle the rest of the tribe, and the other is that a friendly relationship between a Houyhnhnm and a Yahoo is ‘not agreeable to Reason or Nature, or a Thing ever heard of before among them’. Gulliver’s master is somewhat unwilling to obey, but the ‘exhortation’ (a Houyhnhnm, we are told, is never compelled to do anything, he is merely ‘exhorted’ or ‘advised’) cannot be disregarded.
This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which is explicit in the anarchist or pacifist vision of Society. In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by ‘thou shalt not’, the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by ‘love’ or ‘reason’, he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.’
Politics Versus Literature.

***

Clive James on Orwell
‘Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’ But you guessed straight away: George Orwell. The subject stated up front, the sudden acceleration from the scope-widening parenthesis into the piercing argument that follows, the way the obvious opposition between ‘lies’ and ‘truthful’ leads into the shockingly abrupt coupling of ‘murder’ and ‘respectable’, the elegant, reverse-written coda clinched with a dirt-common epithet, the whole easy-seeming poise and compact drive of it, a world view compressed to the size of a motto from a fortune cookie, demanding to be read out and sayable in a single breath..”
http://www.clivejames.com/evenaswespeak/orwell

***

Socialism, Capitalism and Fascism
‘What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism – that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit – does not work. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for the best. Hitler’s conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result.
When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism.
Socialism is usually defined as ‘common ownership of the means of production’. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it.
In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment.
However, it has become clear in the last few years that ‘common ownership of the means of production’ is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a class-system. Centralized ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. ‘The State’ may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money.
But what then is Fascism?
Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and – this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism – generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen. But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism.
Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have ‘proved’ over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the ‘semi-apes’ as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery.
However horrible this system may seem to us, it works. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State.
From Lion and The Unicorn

***

The Danger of the Educated Masses
“From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. …They could only become dangerous if the advances of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly.”
From Goldstein’s Book. 1984

***

The Death of Immortality
‘Since the decay of the belief in personal immortality, death has never seemed funny, and it will be a long time before it does so again. Hence the disappearance of the facetious epitaph, once a common feature of country churchyards. I should be astonished to see a comic epitaph dated later than 1850. There is one in Kew, if I remember rightly, which might be about that date. About half the tombstone is covered with a long panegyric on his dead wife by a bereaved husband: at the bottom of the stone is a later inscription which reads, ‘Now he’s gone, too’.
One of the best epitaphs in English is Landor’s epitaph on ‘Dirce’, a pseudonym for I do not know whom. It is not exactly comic, but it is essentially profane. If I were a woman it would be my favourite epitaph—that is to say, it would be the one I should like to have for myself. It runs:
Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat conveyed,
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old and she a shade.
It would almost be worth being dead to have that written about you.’
As I Please
http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19470214.html

***

Immortality
“Now, I find it very rare to meet anyone, of whatever background, who admits to believing in personal immortality. Still, I think it quite likely that if you asked everyone the question and put pencil and paper in hands, a fairly large number (I am not so free with my percentages as Mr. Dark) would admit the possibility that after death there might be ‘something’.
The point Mr. Dark has missed is that the belief, such as it is, hasn’t the actuality it had for our forefathers. Never, literally never in recent years, have I met anyone who gave me the impression of believing in the next world as firmly as he believed in the existence of, for instance, Australia. Belief in the next world does not influence conduct as it would if it were genuine. With that endless existence beyond death to look forward to, how trivial our lives here would seem! Most Christians profess to believe in Hell. Yet have you ever met a Christian who seemed as afraid of Hell as he was of cancer? Even very devout Christians will make jokes about Hell. They wouldn’t make jokes about leprosy, or RAF pilots with their faces burnt away: the subject is too painful. Here there springs into my mind a little triolet by the late A. M. Currie:

‘It’s a pity that Poppa has sold his soul
It makes him sizzle at breakfast so.
The money was useful, but still on the whole

It’s a pity that Poppa has sold his soul
When he might have held on like the Baron de Coal
And not cleared out when the price was low.

It’s a pity that Poppa has sold his soul
It makes him sizzle at breakfast so.’

Currie, a Catholic, would presumably have said that he believed in Hell. If his next-door neighbour had been burnt to death he would not have written a comic poem about it, yet he can make jokes about somebody being fried for millions of years. I say that such belief has no reality. It is a sham currency, like the money in Samuel Butler’s Musical Banks.’
April 14, 1944
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_01

ARCHIVE
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/newspapers/new-york-tribune.htm

…

As I Please.
‘And why is it that most of us never use a word of English origin if we can find a manufactured Greek one? One sees a good example of this in the rapid disappearance of English flower names. What until twenty years ago was universally called a snapdragon is now called an antirrhinum, a word no one can spell without consulting a dictionary. Forget-me-nots are coming more and more to be called myosotis.
Many other names, Red Hot Poker, Mind Your Own Business, Love Lies Sleeping, London Pride, are disappearing in favour of colourless Greek names out of botany textbooks. I had better not continue too long on this subject, because last time I mentioned flowers in this column an indignant lady wrote in to say that flowers are bourgeois. But I don’t think it a good augury for the future of the English language that ‘marigold’ should be dropped in favour of ‘calendula’, while the pleasant little Cheddar Pink loses is name and becomes merely Dianthus Caesius.”
http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19440421.html

Principles of Newspeak.
(Appendix to 1984.)
Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles in the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The version in use in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary, that we are concerned here.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them …
Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly-created words, would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak words were divided into three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary, the B vocabulary (also called compound words), and the C vocabulary. It will be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for all three categories.

The A vocabulary. The A vocabulary consisted of the words needed for the business of everyday life —… It was composed almost entirely of words that we already possess … but in comparison with the present-day English vocabulary their number was extremely small, while their meanings were far more rigidly defined. All ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out of them. ..

The grammar of Newspeak had two outstanding peculiarities. The first of these was an almost complete interchangeability between different parts of speech. Any word in the language (in principle this applied even to very abstract words such as if or when) could be used either as verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. Between the verb and the noun form, when they were of the same root, there was never any variation, this rule of itself involving the destruction of many archaic forms. …The word thought, for example, did not exist in Newspeak. Its place was taken by think, which did duty for both noun and verb. ..Certain of our present-day adjectives, such as good, strong, big, black, soft, were retained, but their total number was very small. There was little need for them, since almost any adjectival meaning could be arrived at by adding –ful to a noun-verb. None of the now-existing adverbs was retained, except for a very few already ending in –wise: the –wise termination was invariable. The word well, for example, was replaced by goodwise.

Newspeak words, of which oldthink was one, was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them. These words, necessarily few in number, had had their meanings extended until they contained within themselves whole batteries of words which, as they were sufficiently covered by a single comprehensive term, could now be scrapped and forgotten. The greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak Dictionary was not to invent new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure, that is to say, what ranges of words they cancelled by their existence.

…Countless other words such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished them. .. What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped ‘false gods’. .. In somewhat the same way, the party member knew what constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly vague, generalized terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were possible. ,,, In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it was heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent.

So did the fact of having very few words to choose from. …Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. …

The C vocabulary. The C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms. …there was no vocabulary expressing the function of Science as a habit of mind, or a method of thought, irrespective of its particular branches. There was, indeed, no word for ‘Science’, any meaning that it could possibly bear being already sufficiently covered by the word Ingsoc….

When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed. History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained one’s knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read them. In the future such fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible and untranslatable. … Pre-revolutionary literature could only be subjected to ideological translation — that is, alteration in sense as well as language. Take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…

It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson’s words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.
…
There were also large quantities of merely utilitarian literature — indispensable technical manuals, and the like — that had to be treated in the same way. It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050.

1949

https://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app

Tags:

Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global Warming

Science is now as unanimous about the causes of Global Pandemics as it is about the causes of Global Warming.
(See below.)
___________________________________________________________________

Some of the Science.

‘Since 2017, another coronavirus – emerging, like the Covid-19 and SARS viruses, from horseshoe bats – has been triggering deadly outbreaks among piglets in China. In the laboratory, the new bug appears to have the genetic potential to infect human airway and intestinal cells. ‘
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/04/21/earth-abuse-and-the-next-pandemic/

‘We develop a multi‐host model for pathogen transmission between species inhabiting intact and converted habitat. Interspecies contacts and host populations vary with the proportion of land converted; enabling us to quantify infection risk across a changing landscape. In a range of scenarios, the highest spillover risk occurs at intermediate levels of habitat loss, whereas the largest, but rarest, epidemics occur at extremes of land conversion. This framework provides insights into the mechanisms driving disease emergence and spillover during land conversion. The finding that the risk of spillover is highest at intermediate levels of habitat loss provides important guidance for conservation and public health policy.’
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.12904

“There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – us. As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. “
https://ipbes.net/covid19stimulus

“It’s pretty well established that deforestation can be a strong driver of infectious disease transmission,” says Andy MacDonald, a disease ecologist at the Earth Research Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s a numbers game: The more we degrade and clear forest habitats, the more likely it is that we’re going to find ourselves in these situations where epidemics of infectious diseases occur.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans

‘ the same factors that mitigate environmental risks—reducing the demands we place on nature by optimizing consumption, shortening and localizing supply chains, substituting animal proteins with plant proteins, decreasing pollution—are likely to help mitigate the risk of pandemics’.
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/addressing-climate-change-in-a-post-pandemic-world#

‘The emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be related to urbanization, habitat destruction, live animal trade, intensive livestock farming and global travel. 
.. Health threats due to human impacts on Earth may appear to be of less immediate concern: climate change, pollution, urbanisation and unsustainable consumption that have led to major environmental disturbances and biodiversity loss.
In fact, neither climate change nor other environmental stressors and their impacts on human and ecosystems health have receded. Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis highlights the links between environmental changes and emergence of infectious diseases and warns us of the urgent need to prevent such pandemics, as their control has proven to be highly challenging in a globalized world. This calls for a planetary health perspective in governance and research and for inter-, trans-disciplinary and trans-sectorial approaches’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322273

‘In the same spirit, in a Science Alert article (Ramon 2020), ecologist David Lapola warns that the next pandemic could come from the Amazon rainforest since human encroachment on animals’ habitats—a likely culprit in the coronavirus outbreak—is soaring there because of rampant deforestation.
In a similar vein, Afelt et al. (2018)—even before the current COVID-19 crisis—linked deforestation with the emergence of coronaviruses and novel infectious diseases, and Zimmer (2019) indicated that scientific evidence suggests that deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans.’
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-020-00442-z

“But as we enter a new century, this unprecedented consumer appetite is undermining the natural systems we all depend on, and making it even harder for the world’s poor to meet their basic needs.”
The report addresses the devastating toll on the Earth’s water supplies, natural resources, and ecosystems exacted by a plethora of disposable cameras, plastic garbage bags, and other cheaply made goods with built in product-obsolescence, and cheaply made manufactured goods that lead to a “throw away” mentality.
“Most of the environmental issues we see today can be linked to consumption,” said Gary Gardner, director of research for Worldwatch.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/consumerism-earth-suffers

“Even the World Economic Forum, which is captive of dangerous greenwashing propaganda (Bakan, 2020), now recognizes biodiversity loss as one of the top threats to the global economy (World Economic Forum, 2020).
The emergence of a long-predicted pandemic (Daily and Ehrlich, 1996a), likely related to biodiversity loss, poignantly exemplifies how that imbalance is degrading both human health and wealth (Austin, 2020; Dobson et al., 2020; Roe et al., 2020).
With three-quarters of new infectious diseases resulting from human-animal interactions, environmental degradation via climate change, deforestation, intensive farming, bushmeat hunting, and an exploding wildlife trade mean that the opportunities for pathogen-transferring interactions are high (Austin, 2020; Daszak et al., 2020).
That much of this degradation is occurring in Biodiversity Hotspots where pathogen diversity is also highest (Keesing et al., 2010), but where institutional capacity is weakest, further increases the risk of pathogen release and spread (Austin, 2020; Schmeller et al., 2020).”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full

“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”..
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933223-300-rescue-plan-for-nature-how-to-fix-the-biodiversity-crisis/

We’ve been ravaging the planet’s ecosystems for too long, but crucial decisions this year could be the turning point that help us restore our relationship with nature
newscientist.com

‘Because of our broken relationship with nature, these events are already happening more frequently: more than 335 emerging infectious disease outbreaks were reported worldwide from 1940 to 2004 – over 50 per decade.
The next novel virus that we encounter could be both highly transmissible and highly virulent – leading to an immediate existential threat for much of humanity (Jones et al, 2008).’
https://www.preventingfuturepandemics.org/the-problem

‘Dr Peter Daszak and Dr William Karesh from EcoHealth Alliance highlight how climate change and pandemic risk are interconnected; all the solutions already identified to tackle global warming will also help prevent the next virus from jumping.‘
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000symp
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000symq

“The reason roads are being built in the rainforests of Indonesia is to supply palm oil,”
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2258527-controlling-deforestation-and-wildlife-trade-could-prevent-pandemics/

‘Three quarters of the emerging pathogens that infect humans leaped from animals, many of them creatures in the forest habitats that we are slashing and burning to create land for crops, including biofuel plants, and for mining and housing. The more we clear, the more we come into contact with wildlife that carries microbes well suited to kill us—and the more we concentrate those animals in smaller areas where they can swap infectious microbes, raising the chances of novel strains. 
…In addition, we have to examine factory farms that pack thousands of animals together—the source of the 2009 swine flu outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people in the U.S. and multitudes worldwide.‘
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stopping-deforestation-can-prevent-pandemics1/

‘Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems
Our results suggest that global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.’ ( Nature)
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/statements/preventing-next-pandemic-zoonotic-diseases-and-how-break-chain

“We’ve been warning about this for decades,” says Kate Jones, an ecological modeller at University College London and an author on the study, published on 5 August in Nature1. “Nobody paid any attention.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02341-1

If-you-want-pandemics-build-factory-farms
https://farmsnotfactories.org/articles/if-you-want-pandemics-build-factory-farms/

Expert-brands-factory-farms-destructive-weapon
https://www.plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/expert-brands-factory-farms-destructive-weapon-coronavirus

Timeline of pandemics and other viruses that humans caught by interacting with animals
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-pandemic-viruses-animals-bird-swine-flu-sars-mers-ebola-zika-a9483211.html

Three years ago, an article published by the US National Centre for Biotechnology Information stated, presciently:
“The Aids and influenza pandemics have claimed and will continue to claim millions of lives. The recent Sars and Ebola epidemics have threatened populations across borders. The emergence of Mers may well be warning signals of a nascent pandemic threat.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28633891

Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans
“As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans/
https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/deforestation-makes-pandemics-more-likely-0

 ‘For example, fires in Indonesia caused by slash-and-burn deforestation during an El-Niño related drought in 1997-1998, may have resulted in the emergence of the Nipah virus, which caused more than 100 deaths in nearby Malaysia. The fires on the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra consumed more than 5 million hectares of forest, generating a regional haze that spread to peninsular Malaysia, where it inhibited agricultural yields and the fruiting of forest trees. This in turn may have reduced food sources for foraging fruit bats, leading them to seek alternative sources of food on farms, where the virus transmitted from the bats to pigs, and ultimately to humans.’
https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/deforestation-makes-pandemics-more-likely-0

‘Since the first animal-to-human infection, yellow fever, was identified in 1901, scientists have found at least another 200 viruses known to cause disease in humans. According to research by Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, new species of viruses are being discovered at a rate of three to four a year. The majority of them originate from animals.
Experts say the rising number of emerging viruses is largely the result of ecological destruction and wildlife trade.
As their natural habitats disappear, animals like rats, bats, and insects survive where larger animals get wiped out. They’re able to live alongside human beings and are frequently suspected of being the vectors that can carry new diseases to humans.’
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/22/africa/drc-forest-new-virus-intl/index.html

‘Nipah virus is endemic to fruit bats which live in Southeast Asia. The virus does not affect them, but they carry it and can spread it through their bodily fluids, like saliva or urine. While wild fruit bats are used to searching the forest for wild figs or nectar, an entire orchard is a far easier food supply for them and fresh mangoes are, well, ripe for the picking.
On the index farm, the orchards were planted so closely to the pig enclosures that bits of fruit nibbled by the bats fell into the pigs’ pens, a sweet-looking snack which created the perfect opportunity for a bat virus to pass on to pigs and, later, people.‘
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2018/03/nipah

‘Disease X’. World Heath Organisation 2018
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/2018prioritization-report.pdf?ua=1

‘Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including influenza, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people. Combined with highly interconnected globalised economies and rapid transport, this makes pandemics a rapidly growing risk.‘
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30305-3/fulltext

‘Worldwatch reports that worldwide annual expenditures for cosmetics total U.S. $18 billion; the estimate for annual expenditures required to eliminate hunger and malnutrition is $19 billion. Expenditures on pet food in the United States and Europe total $17 billion a year; the estimated cost of immunizing every child, providing clean drinking water for all, and achieving universal literacy is $16.3 billion.’
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/consumerism-earth-suffers





Tags:

‘Remain Indoors’. Life After The Event.

Never in the field of Human Experience, have so many been alienated from so many for so long.
As a species, we are simply not used to this. And our veneer of civilisation is very thin. Especially our current ‘fly-by-wire’ global survival system, which, without the computer of social interaction, would drop the plane out of the sky.
Now we know who truly produces the wealth. And it isn’t the brave, generous billionaires.

Science Preface (Much more science)

‘Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems’
Our results suggest that global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.’ ( Nature)

“We’ve been warning about this for decades,” says Kate Jones, an ecological modeller at University College London and an author on the study, published on 5 August in Nature1. “Nobody paid any attention.”

‘If-you-want-pandemics-build-factory-farms‘

‘Expert-brands-factory-farms-destructive-weapons‘

‘Timeline of pandemics and other viruses that humans caught by interacting with animals‘

Three years ago, an article published by the US National Centre for Biotechnology Information stated, presciently: “The recent Sars and Ebola epidemics have threatened populations across borders. The emergence of Mers may well be warning signals of a nascent pandemic threat.”

Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans
‘As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.’

_________________________________________________________________________________________

COVID 19 LOCKDOWN LOG

News at the top, history at the bottom.

21/04/2022

Steve Baker says Boris Johnson ‘should be long gone’ as MPs are set to vote for inquiry into claims PM misled parliament – live
21 Apr 2022 15:46
In response to ConansMight
Brexit was caused by decades of Europhobe lies by mercenary hacks like Johnson and peddled by billionaire, phone-hacking, tax-dodging, drug-dealing, money-laundering, unaccountable, un-elected, price-fixing, profit-crazed gutter media.
Propaganda which perverted British culture, and corrupted Truth in the name of power.
The last straw for reactionary brexiteers was the fact that Global Warming would demand the end of Consumerism, and as proven by Science, require unprecedented global cooperation. Cooperation is just another world for socialism. And that would never do, even though it means rescuing civilisation from the ravages of profit. Even though it means denying science.
View discussion

Seriously, Tory party, there is no pooper scooper big enough to clear up Johnson’s constant mess
19 Apr 2022 12:38
In response to Deling63
“Keir having a beer and eating pizza at a constituency office” at a planned meeting.
Eating at meetings was not illegal. Whitehall staff did it all the time.
Planning a party certainly was illegal.
How many times did Starmer lie about his meeting? What was the verdict of the Metropolitan police?
Next pathetic excuse for the lawbreaking liar?
View discussion

01/04/2022

Boris Johnson wants you to forget Partygate. Don’t let him get away with it
1 Apr 2022 14:56
In response to chrisd324
At the height of Johnson’s Party-shame, I remember one of his Zombie MPs standing up in parliament and saying much the same thing.
That the problem was not that laws had been broken, but that the laws existed in the first place.
This from the ‘party of law and order’.
View discussion

23/02/2022

LittleRichardjohn
If you’re clinically vulnerable in England, Johnson’s ‘new normal’ is a kick in the teeth
23 Feb 2022 11:40
In response to river1993

We had an epidemic of mental illness for decades before Covid. Strange how the so-called libertarians didn’t worry about that then. Or, more tellingly, ask why people were so sick. This lack of curiosity is of course completely natural. To ask the question would be to reveal the reason, namely that the consumerism they defend to the hilt is a sick system which creates sick people. One which does not value human life, just wealth and power – when it is not actually spawning a range of zoonotic pathogens via its eco-cidal industrial practices. And yet they still persist in dragging us all down this dark alley to be mugged again by catastrophic climate change and all the diseases of consumerism, from cancer to the next Novel Virus.
Reply

22/02/2022

The west knows the cost of appeasement. We can’t rule out any option for stopping Putin
22 Feb 2022 12:48
Putin’s warmongering has presented progressive politics with an opportunity for both promoting Western cooperation and cutting CO2 emissions. Both long overdue and inevitable in the long-term.
When Russian gas supplies to Europe end, Western allies should share reserves. It will mean reduced per capita consumption, but this had to happen sooner or later. Now’s as good a time as any to start.
In retrospect, Russian expansionism and its search for new fossil fuel markets in China was always a reaction to Western ‘threats’ to achieve Zero CO2 emissions. Ukraine is a Gas War.
It’s no coincidence that Putin’s declaration of war came the day after the Chinese Olympics ended. As predicted a month ago. So much for the sneering at Western intelligence.
When will certain stuck-in-the-mud elements realise that Iraq was a long time and several satellites ago? And that their energies should be directed to take geo-political advantage of Putin’s madness rather than carping on his behalf..
View discussion

14/02/2022

The Stasi Poetry Circle review – East Germany’s unsettling war with words
14 Feb 2022 12:49
In response to WoodWorker2008
Yes it is right.
Neo-feudalist Stalinist Russia used precisely the same methods of oppression as the Spanish Inquisition. See the trial of Galileo for reference.
No charges, just the question ‘Do you know why you are here?’ – As in Room 101.
Socialism is a dynamic model based entirely on cooperation – the fundamental human instinct of Social Reciprocal Altruism which predates all property-based power-structures, and still survived in unspoilt cultures until invasion by industrialised slavery capitalism. (Ask captains Cooke & Blye)

The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.
And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.
…Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. .”
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/fun.html

The only deluded ‘creators of Utopia’ are the apologists for modern Consumerism. The deranged toxic cult which has inflicted untold Wars, Plagues and Famines, and is now abut to devastate civilisation.
View discussion

The Stasi Poetry Circle review – East Germany’s unsettling war with words
14 Feb 2022 12:35
In response to WoodWorker2008
‘Soviet occupied Germany, then becoming Eastern Germany’ were not socialist by any stretch of the imagination.
View discussion

The Stasi Poetry Circle review – East Germany’s unsettling war with words
14 Feb 2022 12:33
In response to DerDeutsche
You must ‘teach’ the Daily Mail Orwell curriculum to infant schools, or you would have some clue about the difference between Stalinism and socialism. No wonder the country’s in the mess it is.
Socialism is just another word for cooperation, the defining characteristic of Human Nature. A fact which great thinkers have always realised, and which all tyrants have sought to suppress since the emergence of surplus production.

“It could be claimed, for example, that the most important part of Marx’s theory is contained in the saying: ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’
But before Marx developed it, what force had that saying had? Who had paid any attention to it? Who had inferred from it—what it certainly implies—that laws, religions and moral codes are all a superstructure built over existing property relations?
It was Christ, according to the Gospel, who uttered the text, but it was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion—which, of course, is why they hate him so.”
As I Please. 25 February 1944

Apologists for capitalism are in denial about its effects. It’s a defining characteristic of the creed which is currently devastating the environment and the civilisation which depends on it (in case you hadn’t noticed).
As someone who believes that ideas are ‘dumb’, perhaps you’d like to dream up an alternative to cooperation for reversing the destruction.
View discussion

13/02/2022

The power of stars to meet our energy needs? This is something to be excited about
13 Feb 2022 17:18
In response to Atlant
Wake me up when a fusion plant can even power its own magnets.
View discussion

The power of stars to meet our energy needs? This is something to be excited about
13 Feb 2022 17:17
Fusion is only ‘exciting’ as a remote solution if we ever achieve sustainable consumption levels. And only then as a means of guaranteeing power in certain circumstances.
If it merely ends up under-writing toxic consumerism, it is another death-sentence for the environment, and for political development away from the current oligarchical cesspool.
But since it is so far away from being a practical technology, able to power its own magnets, there is no alternative at present other than more and better renewable power-sources, which can be delivered in time to prevent catastrophic climate change – plus energy rationing on a radical scale.
View discussion

The Stasi Poetry Circle review – East Germany’s unsettling war with words
13 Feb 2022 14:49

‘How had a brutal spy agency alighted on poetry, “this vaguest of disciplines”, as a tool for training its employees?’

Poets can often tolerate dictatorships far better than prose writers.

“Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind, because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought. It follows that the atmosphere of totalitarianism is deadly to any kind of prose writer, though a poet, at any rate a lyric poet, might possibly find it breathable.”
The Prevention of Literature (Orwell)
View discussion

13 Feb 2022 14:46
In response to WoodWorker2008
Misplaced inverted commas.
‘I just can never ever stop being shocked at how oppressive state “socialism” was.’
I’m not ‘socked’ at all, because Stalinism is not socialism.
It was as ‘socialist’ as the Spanish Inquisition was Christian.
View discussion

12/02/2022

More questions than answers for both sides in Wales’s win over Scotland
12 Feb 2022 22:10
In response to Chickaboo
Spoken like a true rugby fan.
Not a bored teenager who’d be better off watching an Adolf Schwarzenegger flick.
View discussion

Dan Biggar’s late drop goal edges Wales past Scotland in Six Nations thriller
Who cares about the so-called ‘quality’.
Feel the Drama.
That’s what it’s all about. That’s what makes an inter-village dustup on a sloping mud-patch just as compelling as any elite circus.
‘Quality’ is for Gymnastics and ice-dancing.
View discussion

10/02/2022

We cannot take democracy for granted – this government’s failings imperil us all
10 Feb 2022 16:54
In response to LordTomato
As Trotsky said: ‘Lies are more powerful than Truth’.
Mark Twain said something similar and grass roots tories peddle the same poison.
Telling its activists they need to ‘learn lessons from Trump’, and to ‘actively lie’ and weaponise fake news’
View discussion

We cannot take democracy for granted – this government’s failings imperil us all
10 Feb 2022 16:45
Only 3 lies to Parliament yesterday (I stand to be corrected)
1. Covid rates are falling when they are RISING
2. Starmer would nationalise energy companies (he explicitly opposed the policy)
3. Labour opposed the Johnson Xmas plan B. (only Labour votes got it across the line in the face of tory backbench opposition)
VERY ‘shifty’.
View discussion

06/02/2022

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to
@blindshore @slimtimcann and @BBCNews
Psychopaths exist because of a psychopathic society. There are no other causes. Who else would you blame? The global Commie Plot or the Devil? Johnson and Trump are just two of the leading psychopaths. The role models peddling toxic values of advertising & dog-eat-dog hate & lies
2:38 PM · Feb 6, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
@OliverDowden
Conservatism delivers the death of Truth itself. A party sick with the cancer of Trumpism from head to grass roots, in hysterical flight from the radical inevitabilities of Consumerist Climate Disaster. “say the first thing that comes into your head” .

huffingtonpost.co.uk Tory Activists Told To ‘Openly Lie’ And ‘Weaponise Fake News’ In Party Newsletter Wellingborough Conservatives urge would-be politicians to ape Donald Trump and “say the first thing that comes into your head”.
2:07 PM · Feb 6, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @OliverDowden
Conservatism ‘delivered’ Johnson, and all his lies. British people? History is watching you. ‘Making the trains run on tie’ is the esxcuse of every despot. Only Johnson can’t even do that. Or ‘deliver’ on the economy, Pandemic, or anything else

theguardian.com ‘We got the big calls right’ said Boris Johnson. But did he really? Observer writers examine whether the claims in the PM’s speech to parliament on 19 January actually hold water
1:59 PM · Feb 6, 2022·Twitter Web App

05/02/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
How can @NadineDorries promote an online safety bill which would make Johnson’s scurrilous allegations illegal, then defend the PM for dragging the dark web onto the widest platform available? Pure doublethink.
3:48 PM · Feb 5, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @JANUSZCZAK
Dorries is pure doublethink. Proposing a bill which will criminalise DarkWeb lies one minute, then defending her PM for giving the same lies the most oxygen of publicity they’ve ever had. By her law, Johnson would be prosecuted.
3:05 PM · Feb 5, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @EmmaKennedy
What kind of mind is able to promote an Online Safety Bill which criminalises contents of the dark web one minute, then defend her PM for giving its scurrilous lies the widest platform they’ve ever enjoyed? If the bill had been law, Johnson would be an accessory to another crime.
2:06 PM · Feb 5, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MrKennethClarke
How can @NadineDorries talk up an online safety bill which would make Johnson’s scurrilous allegations illegal, then defend the Pm for dragging the dark web onto the widest platform available?
1:47 PM · Feb 5, 2022·Twitter Web App

4/02/2022

The Tories are in trouble – but history tells us a scandal can strengthen them
4 Feb 2022 10:5
In response to 1key2kan
“by purging those who have behaved unacceptably “
I don’t buy this.
If it was meant to be an example of Johnson ‘taking back control’, he chose a fine day to do it, when his chancellor was trying to rescue the Tory Party with a raft of flagship policies – however pathetic. He effectively knocked them off the front pages.
Secondly, any cull of his staff should surely depend on who did what and when, which Johnson keeps saying is in the Gray report and Met investigation, and which we have to wait for before rushing to judgement – but not him.
Again, one rule for us, another for him.
Political schizophrenia gone mad.
View discussion

03/02/2022

Johnson likes to dress up as a mini-dictator. But is he really up to that job?
3 Feb 2022 12:51
In response to Rimbauski
It also provides evidence that Johnson’s doublethink is not merely a cute eccentricity, but a systematic cancer of a reactionary political party in paralysed hysteria at the radical necessities of countering Consumerist Climate Disaster and recurring Pandemics.
A classic Armeggedon panic, only this time for real. based on hard science and experience.
View discussion

Johnson likes to dress up as a mini-dictator. But is he really up to that job?
3 Feb 2022 12:45
In response to tellingtruthtopower
The same Johnson who, whenever in authority, presided over Putin’s criminal, anti-democratic Londongrad money-machine?
The one which also finances Red Army tanks, and bungs 14 tory cabinet ministers with Kremlin Gold.
View discussion

Johnson likes to dress up as a mini-dictator. But is he really up to that job?
3 Feb 2022 12:40
In response to CassieFromPlanetB
Would this be the same Johnson who has actively helped finance the Red Army tanks and Putin’s war on democracy through his banker mates in Londongrad?
‘A 2018 Foreign Affairs Committee reportt titled “Moscow’s Gold” concluded the best way to tackle Russian aggression was to stop the Kremlin from illegally laundering money through the UK and its overseas terrorities.
“Turning a blind eye to London’s role in hiding the proceeds of Kremlin-connected corruption risks signaling that the UK is not serious about confronting the full spectrum of President Putin’s offensive measures,” it said.’
The same Johnson whose own cabinet is wallowing in Kremlin gold?
‘14 ministers in Boris Johnson’s government received funding from donors linked to Russia’
View discussion

Johnson likes to dress up as a mini-dictator. But is he really up to that job?
3 Feb 2022 11:26
In response to Rimbauski
There are multiple confirmed sightings.
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-westminster-news-tory-newsletter-campions-donald-trump-campaign-tactics-6835896/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-activists-trump-wellingborough-fake-news-b1774341.html
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-take-a-leaf-out-of-trumps-playbook-9tggdlmjl
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18949712.wellingborough-tories-newsletter-tells-members-learn-donald-trump/
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/tory-letter-urges-members-to-be-like-trump-weaponise-fake-news-and-fight-woke-ism-213318/
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tory-leaflet-fake-news-openly-lie_uk_5fd9f679c5b62f31c201f7dc
I could go on.
View discussion

Johnson likes to dress up as a mini-dictator. But is he really up to that job?
3 Feb 2022 11:12
In response to CassieFromPlanetB
Congratulations for finding a Ukrainian paper thanking Johnson for something or other.
How do you think they’d react to this tory newsletter?

‘Subscribers of a Tory Party newsletter in Northamptonshire have been advised to campaign like Donald Trump by “weaponising fake news”.
Activists were told they could “learn lessons” from Trump, adding: “A lie can go round the world before the truth can get its boots on.”’
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-westminster-news-tory-newsletter-campions-donald-trump-campaign-tactics-6835896/

View discussion

Johnson likes to dress up as a mini-dictator. But is he really up to that job?3 Feb 2022 11:08
“Subscribers of a Tory Party newsletter in Northamptonshire have been advised to campaign like Donald Trump by “weaponising fake news”.
Activists were told they could “learn lessons” from Trump, adding:
“A lie can go round the world before the truth can get its boots on.”

They have the gall to quote Mark Twain in order to crush the truth and instill Orwellian doublethink.
There are literally no depths this Tory party will not sink to.
Armageddon Fever runs rife.
View discussion

2/02/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @RosettiVincent@DanHughes87and 4 others
Goldberg didn’t go far enough. ‘Man’s Inhumanity to Man’ is fostered by a toxic class system. Like war, Racism invariably has ECONOMIC causes, & can be traced directly back to the capitalist Slave Trade. Before its C19 codification, racism was more a matter of taste than doctrine
11:39 AM · Feb 2, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @GMB@Baddieland 2 others
All racism is ultimately about CLASS, not primitive anti-rational concepts of ‘Evil’ People are not ‘evil’, the capitalist class-system is toxically DIVISIVE.
In post-WW1 Germany it was more so than ever. The Nazis exploited the resentment of impoverished Germans against rich Jews.
11:30 AM · Feb 2, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @JANUSZCZAK
Consumerism breeds Misanthropy like dung breeds maggots. Antivaxxers are just another species of maggot, with a pathological hatred and resentment of Humanity because they can never share its benefits.
11:22 AM · Feb 2, 2022·Twitter Web App

1/02/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @stilletio1@AnneSheldon_and 2 others
Not if they wore masks, which many did, and by doing so drastically reduced Flu and Cold infections for two seasons: 2020-21. There is no argument for not masking if you are infected with any airborne infection. When did you have flu or a cold last?
4:02 PM · Feb 1, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @T_J_Hutch and @vicderbyshire
Maybe it’s some consolation that he has inadvertently united the country over SOMETHING. As for his ‘big call’ bluster – all fantasies, as the Covid Enquiry will uncover. Note – he doesn’t mind ‘pre-judging’ that.
theguardian.com‘We got the big calls right’ said Boris Johnson. But did he really?Observer writers examine whether the claims in the PM’s speech to parliament on 19 January actually hold water
1:02 PM · Feb 1, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @carlriggs2 and @vicderbyshire
Johnson is Putin’s paid castrated poodle, ‘boosting’ London as a global corruption centre for Russian gangster Kleptocrats.
His policies have PAID for the tanks about to invade Ukraine, and Putin’s war on democracy.
He has no power.
https://independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukraine-invasion-russia-dirty-money-b2001110.html… .independent.co.ukRussian dirty money and ‘close ties’ to Tories will hit Ukraine response, experts sayRussian dirty money in London – and “close ties” to the Tory party – will hinder the UK’s pledges to get tough with Moscow if it invades Ukraine, US experts are warning.
12:48 PM · Feb 1, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Politicalfoot1@BBCr4today and @bbcnickrobinson
He obviously doesn’t mind ‘pre-judging’ the results of the Covid Enquiry, which will probably find he failed comprehensively. In fact his claims are fantasy.
theguardian.com‘We got the big calls right’ said Boris Johnson. But did he really?Observer writers examine whether the claims in the PM’s speech to parliament on 19 January actually hold water
12:32 PM · Feb 1, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCr4today and @bbcnickrobinson
Mini-Trump Johnson goes full QAnon. The shameless, psychopathic lies are endless. His denial he lied and broke the law is his version of Trump denying he lost the US election.
Meanwhile posing as the saviour from Putin while being his Londongrad paid poodle. Unbelievable.
12:29 PM · Feb 1, 2022·Twitter Web App

31/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @shuker_lynne and @BBCNews
Only substantiated categorically by the Gray report.
“Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place.”
IE, there WERE events, they WERE illegal, and Johnson therefore repeatedly LIED to parliament.
Either Gray lied or Johnson did. Which is it?
7:45 PM · Jan 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @GrahamMossy and @bbclaurak
LK on tonight’s 6pm news, sticking to the point as usual.
‘Most damningly, the report concludes that gatherings did happen, which the PM denied in parliament’ (words to that effect.)
Some tory stooge. With friends like her who needs enemies?
7:12 PM · Jan 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bbclaurak
Token sackings and cosmetic reorganisations. Conveniently ignoring the fact he LIED to parliament. He does NOT ‘know what the issue is’ Brexit blah blah Jobs blah blah Covid blah blah crime blah blah. Lies lies lies.
theguardian.com‘We got the big calls right’ said Boris Johnson. But did he really?Observer writers examine whether the claims in the PM’s speech to parliament on 19 January actually hold water
3:40 PM · Jan 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bbclaurak
“At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time.”
I.E. Johnson lied to Parliament.
3:08 PM · Jan 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @AlphaDistra@frank3daviesand 2 others
The reaction was the same as to Climate Change because the causes overlap, and require the same radical solutions, which mean the end of Consumerism. And that would never do.
ensia.comThe surprising link between consumer habits and deadly diseases | EnsiaFrom age-old malaria to the novel coronavirus, markets influence systems that drive pandemic risk. Here’s what we can do about it.
1:22 PM · Jan 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

30/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @AlanHough11@polecattimesand 2 others
Right now, Putin is the old CP reborn. The glorifier of Stalin intent on destroying democracy by any means. Including bribing Johnson through Londongrad, and trashing the European partnership. How does it feel to be brainwashed by a Stalinist?
chathamhouse.orgThe UK’s kleptocracy problemThe UK’s current approach to anti-kleptocracy damages its rule of law, its standing as an opponent of international corruption and the integrity of important domestic institutions.
8:07 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MarkHBurton@IPBESand 2 others
Nice effort, but as you see, most people still don’t get it, in spite of the science. Global cooperation has to replace dog-eat-dog competition if we are to rescue civilisation from Consumerist Climate Crisis – and endless pandemics. Keep trying though.
7:48 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @IPBES and @BeeAsMarine
Cooperation is the key to the success of a species. AKA ‘Reciprocal Social Altruism’ The basic instinct of human beings which the powerful have always tried to suppress.
7:45 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MichaelRosenYes
Can’t resist quoting Burns again at every Johnson obscenity.
‘We cam’ nae here to ken your works
That we may be more wise.
But only, if we gang tae Hell,
It may be no surprise.’
7:42 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
‘This situation is materially and reputationally damaging for the UK’s rule of law …. It demands a new approach by the UK government focused on creating a hostile environment for the world’s kleptocrats.’ https://chathamhouse.org/2021/12/uks-kleptocracy-problem…Quote Tweet

Joan Bakewell@JDBakewell · Jan 30700 Russian millionaires given fast track visas to live in this country…. Why?
7:27 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @BogotaBob@JDBakewell and @Andrew_F_Smith
The Russian Kleptocratic Mafia are NOT ‘good for the country’. They are the biggest gang of murdering, ruthless, drug-runners and anti-democrats in history. Led by Putin and endorsed by Johnson.
nytimes.comOpinion | London Rolls Out the Blood-Red Carpet for Kleptocrats (Published 2016)Britain has allowed its capital to become a playground for oligarchs and their ill-gotten gains. Only a Magnitsky law can quell the corruption.
7:16 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @MichaelRosenYes
He’s also trying to pull a Falklands with the Ukraine. And he’ll do it too, unless his status as Putin’s Poodle hit the tabloid headlines.
.independent.co.ukRussian dirty money and ‘close ties’ to Tories will hit Ukraine response, experts sayRussian dirty money in London – and “close ties” to the Tory party – will hinder the UK’s pledges to get tough with Moscow if it invades Ukraine, US experts are warning.
7:07 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Oates1592@AlanHough11 and @NicholasTyrone
They’ve been around as long as the commercial industrial press. Even before the Mail supported Hitler. Hearst ‘told the people what to think’ in the ’30’s. In the ’70’s they told you that we were ‘swamped’ with Biafran and Ugandan refugees fleeing terrorist regimes. Remember?
6:46 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
‘We got the big calls right’ said Boris Johnson. But did he really? Up to 20,000 people could have died because of the original decision to not lock down in March 2020, according to modelling by Prof Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London.’
‘theguardian.com‘We got the big calls right’ said Boris Johnson. But did he really?Observer writers examine whether the claims in the PM’s speech to parliament on 19 January actually hold water
6:16 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
@Keir_Starmer went with the science and, using basic Foresight, called for this ‘firebreak’. Johnson finally implemented it (too late) and tried to smear Starmer as ‘Captain Hindsight’. The man has no conception of Truth.
6:20 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Luxury at the top, privation at the bottom: Britain is becoming feudal in its disparities
30 Jan 2022 13:35
In response to ranelagh75
Junkies don’t care how they get their next fix, or what it costs.
Consumer culture is Junk culture.
Easy enough to believe.
View discussion

Luxury at the top, privation at the bottom: Britain is becoming feudal in its disparities3
0 Jan 2022 13:33

Britain is becoming feudal in its disparities

Marx proved right again.
Alienation has always been a primary aim of Consumerism.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @CarlosTF50
The most patriotic thing this generation will have had a chance to do is to wear a mask to protect others. And many NATIONALISTS – posing as patriots – won’t even do that.
12:53 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCPolitics
We know what ISN’t going to happen. Any action to end the crooked Russian money flooding through Johnson’s Londongrad, & into the pockets of Ministers and the tory party. Money which has paid for the tanks about to invade Ukraine & for Putin’s war on democracy. Johnson is a Mole.
12:49 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @cowboy_investor@bewiser2 and @BBCNews
By sequestering Russian money in Londongrad, for a start. And taxing energy companies, who are minting the crisis. From the richest, not the poorest. Especially not from embattled gig-economy workers who will have to pay double NI – theirs and their agents’.
12:22 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Bazza73617427 and @guardian
And you don’t care how many lies he tells as long as … What?
He can’t even ‘make the trains run on time’. What primeval urge does he fill for you?
Brexit – Pandemic – the economy – all disasters smothered in lies. .
12:18 PM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @waynebroad12@alanfeeney and @BBCBreaking
Again, because of Consumerist malnutrition, life expectancy is now falling, and disability increasing. The immediate post-war generation, with free healthcare & education is probably the luckiest in British history
.imperial.ac.ukLife expectancy declining in many English communities even before pandemic | Imperial News |…ENGLISH LIFESPANS – A substantial number of English communities experienced a decline in life expectancy from 2010-2019, Imperial College London researchers have found.
11:52 AM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Hepworthclare
How’s THIS for ‘bias? Bias that matters.
“A businessman whose companies have backed 34 Tory MPs made millions from an allegedly corrupt Russian pipeline deal, leaked files show.”
bbc.co.ukPandora Papers: Businessman linked to Tory donations made millions from alleged fraudVictor Fedotov is awaiting government approval for a controversial energy link between UK and France.
11:43 AM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @alanfeeney and @BBCBreaking
Then tax fairly, and from those who have most, like Johnson’s Putin-funded cabinet and their Kleptocrat pals. Not from those in the gig economy, who will have to pay twice – both their own and their agent’s NI.
11:18 AM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

29/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
“Tory MPs urge Johnson to revive bill tackling UK’s dirty money. “Kevin Hollinrake, a Conservative member of the Treasury select committee, said it appeared that ministers wanted to prioritise other measures with “more mass appeal”
“ft.comTory MPs urge Johnson to revive bill tackling UK’s dirty moneyLong-awaited clampdown on money laundering and fraud pushed down legislative agenda
11:03 AM · Jan 30, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @jonarnoldimages@timspector and @BBCNews
No variant of Novel Coronavirus is ‘like Flu’. It’s one thing to talk tripe, but utter tripe is not on. Apart from the crippling effects of Long Covid, allowing it free rein encourages a strain more deadly than Delta and more infectious than Omicron. And all for short term gain.
7:01 PM · Jan 29, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @LiviaAugusta10@ElliotElinor and @Ian_Lineham
I remember the BNP leader Nick Griffin on Newsnight. He was so tied up he ended up blurting out: ‘You’re giving racism a bad name’ (oops!) Didn’t do him any good.
6:46 PM · Jan 29, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @DanielaNadj
Johnson is Putin’s paid poodle. For financial and legal services provided by Londongrad. He is the Oligarch’s friend and democracy’s enemy. He will never implement the sanctions that would hurt. His trip to Kiev is his Munich Agreement.
chathamhouse.org01 Introduction
6:26 PM · Jan 29, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @debrahHarrison3 and @BBCNews
It is time Johnson stopped supporting Putin’s Kleptocracy and his war against democracy. Russian can afford to invade Ukraine because of crooked tory deals Russian gangsters in Londongrad. The biggest Mafia in history.
businessinsider.com14 ministers in Boris Johnson’s government received funding from donors linked to Russia14 ministers in Johnson’s government and two MPs on the Intelligence & Security committee have had donations from Russians with ties to the Kremlin.
3:00 PM · Jan 29, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCNewsThe biggest Johnson lie of the last month is his phoney stance against Putin. The same Putin he has enriched and empowered by opening Londongrad to Russian Kleptocrats and assassins.
The government is in their pockets.
businessinsider.com14 ministers in Boris Johnson’s government received funding from donors linked to Russia14 ministers in Johnson’s government and two MPs on the Intelligence & Security committee have had donations from Russians with ties to the Kremlin.
2:53 PM · Jan 29, 2022·Twitter Web App


27/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @TolgusPeck and @PippaCrerar
The pimps of all whorehouse channels pass their advertising costs on to the consumers. Pensioners pay for Sky just as much as for the BBC. If not more. Advertising doesn’t come cheap. But it does control and pervert everything it touches.
7:27 PM · Jan 27, 2022·Twitter Web App

26/01/2022

Carbon offsetting is not warding off environmental collapse – it’s accelerating it
26 Jan 2022 15:12
In response to ROFLMFAO
You have two choices.
Pay the real price of averting climate disaster and the end of civilisation.
Or Climate disaster and the end of civilisation.
Which is it to be?
View discussion

Carbon offsetting is not warding off environmental collapse – it’s accelerating it
26 Jan 2022 14:4
The stampede to electric cars is also heading down a dead-end.
These toys will not recover the CO2 generated in their production, or reduce environmental devastation or end energy wars – especially if they become the primary mode of transport.
They merely symbolize a toxic individualistic consumerism which is doomed if climate disaster is to be averted.
The only solution is a massive, radical reduction of global consumption to match sustainable levels of energy generation. At present, consumption is still rampaging insanely upwards, in spite of all the science.
View discussion

Big Dog was now The Suspect, but at least Gray’s report would be delayed… Oh.
25 Jan 2022 21:05
There may be one minor benefit to Johnson’s lies.
Throughout the obscene scandal, I have personally never seen any of the victim-testimonies branded with the toxic slur of ‘virtue-signalling’. It has been conspicuous by its absence.
Perhaps this brain-deadening mantra is now broken.
Perhaps we can assert again with confidence that white is not black and up is not down. And that lying is not clever or cool.
If so, it will be partly because of the stark sincerity of those who suffered by obeying the laws the lawmakers broke.
View discussion

Big Dog was now The Suspect, but at least Gray’s report would be delayed… Oh.
25 Jan 2022 21:03
In response to justamentalpatient
Change, development, and tolerance of those prepared to grow, are key progressive values.
Rigid lifelong obedience to a set dogma is a tory curse.
Which are you?
Progressive or tory?View discussion

Boris Johnson has finally gone full Marie Antoinette – only he’s hogging all the cake
25 Jan 2022 16:58
It;s fairly safe to say that everyone is heartily sick of this obscene scandal.
So in honour of the day:
‘We do not come to ken your works
That we may be more wise.
But only if we gang tae Hell
It may be no surprise.’
View discussion

The verdict is in: George Osborne’s help-to-buy scheme has been an utter disaster
25 Jan 2022 12:49
In response to lacaro
“Polly always assumes everyone is upper-middle class”
So how many homeowners don’t pay tax on unearned property wealth?
You seem to assume that there are homeowners with a substantial amount of capital in the form of a mortgage who are somehow not middle class.
Class distinctions have never been clearer, just check your credit rating. But the critical factor has always been collateral or capital.
Toynbee is from the professional classes – a long line of academics. Her level of income depends on her ability to complete a series of tasks, not on privilege or inheritance.
View discussion

The verdict is in: George Osborne’s help-to-buy scheme has been an utter disaster
25 Jan 2022 12:32
In response to The_Bee
Council houses had been sold to residents very early on, but not as a blatant act of theft from the local authorities that built them, nor as a way of making property developers even richer, nor as a way of crippling social housing indefinitely and shackling every successive generation with a lifetime of debt in order to keep toeing the correct political line.
Thatcher’s Right To Buy was not only an unprecedented con-trick and act of corporate theft ensuring lower standards ad a conflict of interest which lethally damaged communities, but a political indoctrination amounting to a gross infringement of human rights.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox

It will have escaped your attention, but tory vermin London is now a key weapon in the armoury of Putin and his mob of anti-democratic, homicidal kleptocrats. Pseudo-intellectual nationalist Brexiteers see this as the ‘freedom’ of market forces – Orwell hated them all.

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Only now, for the first time in history, the ‘Russian bear’ has the willing and profitable collusion of the British ruling classes in destroying democracy and persecuting its dissidents..
chathamhouse.org01 Introduction
5:04 PM · Jan 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Nick4125@russellfclintonand 2 others
Tory vermin have been the global leader in ‘pandering’ to Russian kleptocracy for decades. London is now essential to their crimes and to their suppression of democracy and persecution of dissidents. And the tories are complicit in this obscenity.
chathamhouse.org01 Introduction
4:39 PM · Jan 25, 2022·Twitter Web App

24/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @oflynnsocial
An EU which included Britain would be a stronger alliance. Who broke that alliance? And is it merely a strange coincidence that Putin’s threat to Europe has increased since 2016? Britain is hiding from Russia behind the Europe it betrayed.
5:05 PM · Jan 24, 2022·Twitter Web AppView Tweet activity

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @dem_cath
Russian kleptocracy has the corrupt tory vermin by the balls. London is now a key hub for the suppression of democracy and persecution of any dissents seeking refuge from dictators.
politico.euUK ‘open to influence’ from world’s kleptocratsChatham House report warns regulatory failures and lack of enforcement make it easy for kleptocrats to settle in Britain.
2:30 PM · Jan 24, 2022·Twitter Web App

23/01/2022

How co-operative housing gave me the peace of mind I thought I’d never find
23 Jan 2022 18:47
I lived in the oldest housing coop in London, and still live in the same building, and have seen how, in this country, interfering local authorities will with-hold funding and support to Coops unless they agree to be shackled by politically driven Tenant Management Organisation models, like the one which nominally ran the area which included Grenfell Tower. Local authorities tend to see coops as ‘hippy communes’, even when, as in our case, we rescued a near-derelict estate from demolition.
The TMO model is invariably compromised by the real culprit, the pernicious Right To Buy legislation which creates a conflict of interest between leaseholders and tenants.
Having to pay service charges on all major repairs and renovations, leaseholders will always, with the best will in the world, be more likely to approve the cheapest tender. With predictable results, sometimes catastrophic. When the RTB hit, most experts at the time recognised that this meant the end for coops like ours, and they were right.
On a smaller scale, but no less significant, when a leaseholder’s bathroom leaks into that of a tenant, it can take ten years or a change of leaseholder to get a real plumber to repair the fault. During this time, any significant damage to the tenant’s flat must be repaired by the council, at repeated expense to the council tax payer and ultimately to the tenants in the from of higher rents..
Co-ownership is still ownership, with all its myths, shackles and delusions. Until housing is regarded as a crucial national infrastructure rather than a pot of gold, the housing crisis will always be with us.
View discussion

22/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Robert_Patman and @brexit_sham
In a world with global air-travel and telecommunications, ‘national sovereignty’ is a delusion. Pragmatic partnership and cooperation are the only means of survival – both economic and environmental.
3:33 PM · Jan 22, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Mapolino
As usual, neo-fascists like Ferrari know the value of everyone’s life best. Ferrari has never supported a strike in his life, which means he cannot support the principle of freedom of labour.
Scratch a capitalist and you find an apologist for slavery
2:56 PM · Jan 22, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @CharlesMBlow
As the country most shackled and infected by Consumerist dogma, the USA is a very sick society. An Orwellian psychopathic state. The implications for democracy and the global environment are obvious. Wall street had its eyes on the Chinese method years ago
biginabox.com08/08/08 China – The Opera.2008 No-one was going to be really surprised by the superiority of Chinese orchestration and mass choreography. But this was a production with some style and no cheesiness. Possibly the least laugh…
2:24 PM · Jan 22, 2022·Twitter Web App

21/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Jethart and @BillyVacant
They always, consciously or subconsciously, equated the surgical mask with the muslim veil. In their reptilian back-brains, they were being ‘forced’ to adopt the same garb as terrorists.
3:39 PM · Jan 21, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @LondonCommuter8@AaronLeeHudson and @MayorofLondon
Cavalier attitudes to prevention mean that Covid will always have the critical mass needed to mutate further. And the next variant may well be as lethal to children as the previous ones were to the elderly. But we hate children in this country. They’re mainly consumer-fodder.
2:09 PM · Jan 21, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MayorofLondon
AND – masking and sensible distancing has virtually eradicated the annual Flu massacre.
But if profit is more important than lives, why don’t the anti-maskers have the guts to say so?
2:04 PM · Jan 21, 2022·Twitter Web App

20/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MichaelRosenYes
It was ‘pugnacious’. Shamefully so. So no reflection on LK for saying so.
Just as she immediately branded last week’s PMQ show as ‘a non-apology apology.’
Spot on. Tory Zombie MP’s furious. Some ‘mouthpiece’.
4:38 PM · Jan 20, 2022·Twitter Web App

19/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @simonk8270 and @DrNeenaJha
For once and for all, Novel Coronavirus is NOT ‘like Flu’.
The more people are infected, the more it mutates unpredictably. The next version could easily be as infectious as Omicron and more deadly than Delta. And tragically target children.
8:32 PM · Jan 19, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @eland_bfc10 and @davidschneider
”Freedom Day’ was a “gamble” that has since then contributed to almost 40,000 hospital admissions and more than 4000 deaths.
“thenational.scotBoris Johnson’s ‘Freedom Day’ led to thousands of deaths, top medic saysTHE chief of the British Medical Association has delivered a brutal verdict on the UK Government’s management of the Covid crisis – and said…
3:46 PM · Jan 19, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @lesleymahon@markukfan and @EmmaKennedy
Your taxes do. The TV licence pays for information unpolluted and unintimidated by ruthless toxic corporate power. Unlike the billionaire tax-dodging, phone-tapping media. Free information is essential to a healthy society. Compare and contrast sick homicidal psychopathic America
2:14 PM · Jan 19, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MrJimOBrian and @Keir_Starmer
The 1st reaction of the 1st tory Zombie interviewed on BBC about the defection was to peddle the same unsubstantiated malicious smears of Labour Racism.
More evidence of tory contempt for fact-based Truth. More evidence that modern toryism is merely Trumpism in a bowler hat.
1:58 PM · Jan 19, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Keir_Starmer
How many lies did the PM tell parliament today about Labour’s Covid voting record? Did Labour votes save his Plan B or not? How many lives did ‘Freedom Day’ cost? ‘Freedom Day has contributed to 40,000+ hospital admissions and more than 4,000 deaths
‘news.sky.comCOVID-19: Freedom Day was ‘gamble’ and has contributed to 40,000 hospital admissions, BMA saysMore than 130,000 people in the UK have died with COVID-19 since the pandemic began last year. The British Medical Association says the loosening of restrictions, notably England’s so-called Freedom…
1:51 PM · Jan 19, 2022·Twitter Web App

18/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @lesleymahon and @PippaCrerar
‘the Conservative Party received £3.5 million from naturalized British citizens of Russian and Eurasian backgrounds between 2010 and 2019 — and the volume of donations appears to have increased ever since.
‘politico.euUK ‘open to influence’ from world’s kleptocratsChatham House report warns regulatory failures and lack of enforcement make it easy for kleptocrats to settle in Britain.
6:01 PM · Jan 18, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MrJohnNicolson
The despots and kleptocrats given a cushy home in vermin tory London to peddle their drugs, launder their criminal income and persecute their opponents must be partying in the garden. Another bad day for democracy.
nytimes.comOpinion | London Rolls Out the Blood-Red Carpet for Kleptocrats (Published 2016)Britain has allowed its capital to become a playground for oligarchs and their ill-gotten gains. Only a Magnitsky law can quell the corruption
.4:33 PM · Jan 18, 2022·Twitter Web App

How will the great wrecker Boris Johnson break himself out of this bind?
18 Jan 2022 16:15
In response to UncleDad
Any replacement for Johnson would have to be someone the people could trust, someone who did not dodge and dissemble on his behalf.
Which leaves a only few dog-eared tory backbenchers as front-runners. The rest are seen as chancers tarnished with the same brush as Johnson.
Either choice would be relatively easy meat for refreshingly Boring Starmer and his pack of attack-dogs.
View discussion

17/01/2022

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MarkSeddon1962
Back in 2000, Mark Thompson was advised at a special forum that ‘Survival for the BBC was a simple matter of charging the world to see its back catalogue on the internet, and abolishing the licence fee.’ But apparently the law wouldn’t let it.
biginabox.com‘DIGITAL TV CHOICE’ (Tribune 1999)“The fastest generation of technological change since fire.” is how Alan McCulloch of Saatchi & Saatchi described the imminent explosion in digital communications. Richard Eyre’s “communicopia”…
8:07 PM · Jan 17, 2022·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Culture is not a commodity, to be bought and sold by the yard. As the disgusting spectacle of consumerist America shows, it is who we are. The values we endorse and live by. In Britain these are best represented by the NHS & the BBC. Which is why the tories HAVE to destroy both.
7:50 PM · Jan 17, 2022·Twitter Web App

16/01/2022

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche; How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F Walter – review
16 Jan 2022 15:11
In response to kent_rules
How come those who ‘question the outcome’ of 2020 didn’t do so in 2016?
Or of any other result, win or lose, such as the historic, shameful, Jim Crow perversions of democracy?
View discussion

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche; How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F Walter – review
16 Jan 2022 15:04
In response to ServiusGalba
The term ‘civil war’ carries a load of misleading baggage. But the reality is that there is always a war within civilisation between its advocates and those those wish to stifle it.
There are forces in America now which, in order to preserve their antiquated sense of ‘identity’, need to eradicate all initiatives which will preserve civilisation, primarily anything which attempts to reverse Consumerist Climate Catastrophe. For propaganda purposes, these are branded as ‘communist’ – a term with even more misleading baggage than ‘civil war’.
View discussion

15/01/2022

In times as troubled as these, can we still believe in tragedy?
15 Jan 2022 12:39
I saw the RSC production of Lear in the week America surrendered to Trump.
The truly disturbing thing was hearing the audience titter at Gloucester’s blinding – which was one scene not played for laughs.
If one of the most horrific scenes in Shakespeare doesn’t instil fear and pity, is Tragedy still relevant?
Was it simply the result of the previous gags in the production? The audience being primed to laugh by the direction. Or have we reached a more worrying stage when an audience is unable to be dramatised by one of the most searing spectacles in Shakespeare after watching months of baby-slaughter in Syria and the spectacle of global political anarchy. Have Shakespeare audiences been so traumatised by the moral and intellectual collapse that drama no longer works?
In the same month, I understand that the production of Lear at the Old Vic deliberately pantomimed Gloucester’s blinding.
Has Shakespeare been emasculated in his 400th Anniversary year? Is it reasonable to expect art to be able to cope with the degree of modern horror?
View discussion

12/01/2022

Senior backbench MP joins Scottish Tory leader in calling for Johnson to resign over No 10 lockdown party – as it happened
12 Jan 2022 19:17
In response to davewatcher
Would that be the Laura K who summed up Johnson’s performance best as a ‘Non-apology apology’, and who managed to drag the admission from a Johnson puppet on Politics Live that he ought to resign?
One day the organisers of the hate-campaign against her will have to put up some evidence, or stop lying and find another target for their toxic bile.
At the moment, their lies are as pathological and unfounded as Johnson’s.
View discussion

Senior backbench MP joins Scottish Tory leader in calling for Johnson to resign over No 10 lockdown party – as it happened
12 Jan 2022 19:10
The old ‘One-Nation/Nationalist split in the tory party is reopening and becoming wider.
All Labour has to do is keep hammering the wedge of Covid science and Brexit economics home. And a boring plodder like Starmer, backed by his able team of attack-dogs, is perfectly capable of wielding that mallet, whatever the Fantasy Labour League think.
The lesson of Johnson is that He who Lives by the Personality Cult dies by it.
The country is getting thoroughly sick of being run by an Etonian Flash Harry.
View discussion

12/01/2022

BLOCKED FROM TWITTER AGAIN!
Alleged ‘breach of community guidlelines’

@IainLittle1 @DefendingB @bbclaurak ‘You mean the BBC journalist who branded Johnson’s performance as a ‘non-apology apology’? You’re deranged. As deranged a liar as Johnson himself.’ 22/10/2021

Tweet deleted, account available in 24 hours.

11/02/2022

Who’s really leading Britain – Boris Johnson or the crazy-face emoji?
11 Jan 2022 15:08

Michael Ellis says there is no evidence. So are the emails fake or forged? In which case they are inadmissable. So what does the ‘Investigation’ have to investigate?
And why does the PM get the privilege of an expensive private ritual instead of being up before the Beak like everyone else?
If there really is ‘one law for all’ – as Ellis says.
View discussion

09/02/2022

Why can’t we stop scrolling or eating Haribo? Blame the lizard brain
9 Jan 2022 19:36
In response to Princess_But_Buts
“we told you to be aware every single advert break”
Fantasy.
Every smear of consumerist propaganda promises unconditional ecstasy in a flawless utopia.
View discussion

Why can’t we stop scrolling or eating Haribo? Blame the lizard brain
9 Jan 2022 18:48
In response to Seymourpratt
It’s no secret that Consumerism exploits the basest Human instincts for its own ends, like the supreme Junk-dealer or most psychopathic dictator.
Bi-passing the intelligence and the core instinct of Social Reciprocity is essential both to Trump and Coca-Cola
.View discussion

06/01/2022

Britain’s shameful slavery history matters – that’s why a jury acquitted the Colston Four
6 Jan 2022 14:35
In response to OnParade
Those who deny truth are living in their own mental Antarctic, and would drag us all with them.
Like the thugs who are still trying to rewrite American history.
View discussion

Britain’s shameful slavery history matters – that’s why a jury acquitted the Colston Four6 Jan 2022 13:2935 RecommendIn response to KMorgan1

For 20 years the local council faced mass opposition to the obscene hate-crime and failed to act.
The removal by the people simply saved taxpayers’ money. Now that Colston is recontextualised in a museum, the truth of his crimes are on display.
Only an apologist for mass-murder would place property before truth. The ethics of the slave trade are never far below the surface in today’s Britain.
Scratch a capitalist and you’ll find a slaver.
View discussion

Britain’s shameful slavery history matters – that’s why a jury acquitted the Colston Four
6 Jan 2022 13:21
In response to Dingleberryc
Nonsense.
It merely endangers the glorifications of genocide.
Which all civilised people would approve of.
For your information, the ‘Colston Hall’ no longer exists. It is now the ‘Bristol Beacon’.
Is that OK by you?
View discussion

Britain’s shameful slavery history matters – that’s why a jury acquitted the Colston Four
6 Jan 2022 13:17
In response to SausagesForTea
The jury decided that the glorification of genocide was more ‘criminal’ than the restoration of Historic Truth.
Result – a not guilty verdict.
A good day for History. A bad one for Lies.
View discussion

The cost-of-living crisis is going to upend British politics in 2022
5 Jan 2022 21:29
In response to Continentalcyclist

So were the French and the Russian Revolutions.

And your solution would have been to perpetuate the Divine Right of Kings indefinitely. With all the inherent slaughter and persecution.
Swift’s wholesale condemnations of the Human Race never got us anywhere.
Amusing for misanthropists, egotists and depressives, but not food for thought, or one calorie of energy for a single step towards equality and justice.
View discussion

The cost-of-living crisis is going to upend British politics in 20225
Jan 2022 21:22
In response to Kurwenal
The Arab Spring of 2011 was caused by bread shortages.
There is no reason why the fuel famine to come won’t cause the same level of unrest.
Even now, troops in Khazakstan are crossing the line and joining the nationwide protests, which is generally a sign of revolution.
View discussion

Nasa’s Webb telescope is a joy. But it’s the private ventures that push at limits
2 Jan 2022 11:45
In response to OrganicPeaBrain
The corporations own the governments, and their power to regulate.
Which is why regulation is not happening. Why COP 26 was such a disaster.
View discussion

Nasa’s Webb telescope is a joy. But it’s the private ventures that push at limits
2 Jan 2022 11:42
In response to EthosDaimon
Would this be the same Australia that is in the vanguard of ecological sabotage?
View discussion

Nasa’s Webb telescope is a joy. But it’s the private ventures that push at limits
2 Jan 2022 11:24
In response to Wiretrip
Unless states manage an unprecedented degree of global cooperation within the next ten years, the wonderful private sector will have achieved its ultimate goal of destroying the environment and civilisation with it.
That’s al that needs to be said about money-grabbing capitalism.
View discussion

30/12/2021

Now Christmas is over, how bad is the Omicron situation in England?
30 Dec 2021 16:06
In response to bettycallmeal
Only fundamentalist Consumerist dogma equates sleazy nightclubs, burger bars and junk-shops with ‘society’.
Don’t abuse a noble word.
View discussion

28/12/2021

Johnson has a chance to end homelessness now – if he dares to seize it
28 Dec 2021 16:32
Johnson hasn’t even got the guts to face down his backbench Rednecks over vaccine passports, let alone tackle the property pirates and reverse decades of damage inflicted by the Right to Buy.
He couldn’t end homelessness even if he wanted to. Chronic homelessness is here to stay; wired into the system as a permanent compulsion join the mortgaged hordes trampling over each other in search of a roof over their heads.
View discussion

In our war of words, full stops are dying but the exclamation mark is doing fine
28 Dec 2021 12:23
In response to LauraHind
The comma makes the sentence conversational.
The words of a person, speaking naturally. Not that of a Dalek spewing out a dead mechanical message.
It gives the statement timing and human rhythm, allowing the reader time to absorb the meaning.
Without this consideration for the reader, writing is just a commandment to read. It’s called ‘style’.
View discussion

23.12.2021

Covid will not be our last global health crisis – we need a long-term plan
23 Dec 2021 14:26
In response to GaryWord
More cooperation, less competition.
The old political labels are not only obsolete, but too scary for minds brainwashed by generations of Consumerist propaganda.
Competition was fine for ridding us of Kings and forging some handy technologies, but we didn’t know the price would be ecological devastation and the end of civilisation. A poisoned atmosphere and oceans, and deadly new plagues unleashed by much the same money-grabbing sabotage. The same technologies could have been used to bring Peace and Goodwill to us all long ago. Instead they have been abused to perpetuate war, degradation and global malnutrition.
People are naturally cooperative. The chemicals generated when we work together make us feel good, and are habit-forming. Only in very recent history, and only in parts of the world has this instinct been suppressed by property-based power-hierarchies.
Human Reciprocal Altruism is the most powerful and deeply-rooted weapon we have, which is why it is denied and vilified by the profiteers and their Zombie disciples. Especially at this ‘special’ time of year. A real Xmas would be a critical danger to their death-worshipping Junk-economy. And so the midwinter festival must be perverted from a spiritual celebration of Human fellowship into the ultimate cash-cow. An orgy of excess and toxic waste signifying nothing.
View discussion

22/12/2021

The big idea: could we do Christmas differently?
22 Dec 2021 12:46
How could ‘we’ do it any worse?
Xmas is merely a consumerist orgy. An expression of despair at the futility of life under a corporate regime dedicated entirely to profit. As remote from its original motivation as possible.
View discussion

The big idea: could we do Christmas differently?
22 Dec 2021 12:46
The question of the day seems to be:
‘What does ‘clarity’ for the hospitality sector look like?’
Like a credible Covid Passport, as in France.
But since the ‘Track’n’Trace farce, people have learned not to trust this mob with anything, so they stay at home. And the pubs and restaurants close at taxpayers’ expense.
As for ‘severity’.
Staff absences up up UP. Teachers, social workers, medical staff, delivery drivers,
A de facto LOCKDOWN which is even more damaging than an intelligent, managed one. Causing more distress, mental illness, and deaths.
View discussion

Omicron is exploding – but scientists are better prepared than for any past variant
22 Dec 2021 12:35
In response to CoffeeSometimesHelps
The ‘severity’ is irrelevant.
The number of infections more than makes up by removing critical sections of the workforce, and all the suffering and lives that costs.
View discussion

Omicron is exploding – but scientists are better prepared than for any past variant
22 Dec 2021 12:32
In response to PhilMcAvertie
Staff shortages are the test.
And these are rocketing.
Or are they all liars and chancers?
View discussion

Omicron is exploding – but scientists are better prepared than for any past variant
22 Dec 2021 12:30
In response to lisamarie3
Probably because polio evolved without Human intercession.
Unlike Avian Flu, and all other viruses caused by the domestication of animals.
Covid is the result of high-metabolic bats forced by deforestation into close proximity with Humans and their livestock.
View discussion

21/12/2021

Omicron is spreading at an alarming rate, and there’s no solid evidence it’s ‘milder’
21 Dec 2021 11:58
In response to Flannacha
And when it’s endemic, it will have ample opportunity to mutate into something far more deadly. Children are already in intensive care with Omicron variant, though in small numbers so far.
The next mutation may not be so charitable.
Even if it proves to be no more severe than a heavy cold, it will still put a massive proportion of the workforce out of action, landing us with an uncontrolled lockdown instead of a managed one.
Either we take control or nature will.
View discussion

19/12/2021

A dangerous lie is stalking the NHS: that it is no longer fit for purpose
19 Dec 2021 12:42
‘WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE PANDEMIC, B.U.P.A?’
View discussion

A dangerous lie is stalking the NHS: that it is no longer fit for purpose19 Dec 2021 12:38
In response to ReturnOfTheLeft
Even after a decade of tory sabotage, the NHS has still handled Covid better than the German system.
If we had German politicians and Germany had our NHS, the history of the pandemic would be very different.
View discussion

18/12/2021

North Shropshire proves progressive parties must work together to beat the Tories
18 Dec 2021 13:01
If Corbyn had been willing to cooperate to break down trivial party boundaries, he would be PM now and Brexit would never have happened.
View discussion

17/12/2021

I ignored Strictly for 19 seasons – then fell for its hypnotic effervescence in minutes
17 Dec 2021 16:24
In response to styleme
Why does everything now have to be a squalid competition? From baking buns to selling houses.
Human activity is worth watching for its own sake. Few spectacles are more engaging than those of people doing what they do best. Which is why James May’s ‘Reassembler’ will always deliver more genuine human engagement than any parlour game.
View discussion

09/12/2021

Plan B shows Britain is still chasing Covid. Here’s how we can get ahead of it
9 Dec 2021 12:39
567 days since The Event, and here we are again.
Remain Indoors!
View discussion

03/12/2021

The Tories might have won Bexley – but they’re worried about the rise of Reform
3 Dec 2021 14:03

the biggest worries in CCHQ about the next election is that a party will emerge that will outflank them on the right.

As Climate Oblivion become more undeniable, every reactionary backlash will become fiercer and more hysterical.
The current Refugee ‘Crisis’ is nothing compared with the global Exodus and infrastructure chaos to come. And ‘Reform’ will be there to rally the hyper-denial, and to repel any measures to restrain environmental sabotage.
When the ‘identity’ of enough people is based entirely on conforming to the edicts of Consumerism, they have no choice but to deny reality. Intellectually, they probably know that the science is right. But their primitive need for an ‘identity’ over-rules their brain.
View discussion

10/11/2021

Mandatory Covid jabs shouldn’t be controversial – NHS staff have a duty to do no harm10 Nov 2021 14:3750 RecommendIn response to irreligious

If they are not treated at all because the surgeon who would’ve treated them has been sacked, then they will definitely die.

Are you saying this on the basis of anything you know, or is it just a guess?

I’m guessing the latter.
If Covid passes are good enough for clubbers, theatre-goers and football fans, they’re good enough for those who are supposed to care for our sick and vulnerable.
The ornery perverse few who won’t ensure their safety simply don’t care, and should go back to designing cathedrals or whatever they think won’t infringe on their precious ‘civil rights’.
A simple repeal of the tory anti-foreigner laws would easily help fill the skills gap Brexit created, and which has already killed patients, and for the very reasons you mention.
View discussion

Make extreme wealth extinct: it’s the only way to avoid climate breakdown
10 Nov 2021 10:43
In response to Shadowcaptain
Nobody ‘envies’ the bloated billionaires.
They are the widespread objects of contempt, pity and, very soon, of global anger and hostility.
Taking away their obscene wealth will help stop people breaking their windows, and save their miserable lives.
View discussion

Make extreme wealth extinct: it’s the only way to avoid climate breakdown
10 Nov 2021 10:37
In response to Kb1984
Presume all you want, but the reality is that if there isn’t a rapid, return to mid C20th levels of personal consumption and waste, global temperatures will continue to soar. This is only possible by a radical political shift from the age of toxic competition to one of global cooperation.
COP’s ‘business as usual’ dependence of Deathbed Capitalism to solve the problem is a recipe for climate catastrophe.
View discussion

04/11/2021

Cop26 will be derailed unless the rich world meets its obligation to the poor
4 Nov 2021 13:16
In response to cman
Sunak’s promises and Johnson’s ‘trillion-column cathedrals’ are just lies dedicated to perpetuating capitalism to the death.
At the moment, the victims of global warming are bearing the cost. The equivalent of Africa paying reperations for the Slave Trade.
View discussion

01/11/2021

At Cop26 the stage is set for a battle over the next phase of capitalism
1 Nov 2021 12:10
The war against climate disaster will never be won with middle-class technocratic jargon.
If I never hear the word ‘transition’ again it will be too soon.
View discussion

21/10/2021

Omicron is spreading at an alarming rate, and there’s no solid evidence it’s ‘milder’
21 Dec 2021 11:51
In response to dr8765
You mean wait and see if that thing that looks like a grand piano falling from the sky is a Steinway or not.
Very ‘scientific’.
Better yet, wait and see what kind of killer virus emerges when an immuno-suppressed HIV subject spawns a variant with the virulence of Delta and infectiousness of Omicron. Something which the scientists in South Africa are monitoring closely.
The Spanish Flu which killed 50 million men women and children was probably spawned under similar circumstances.
View discussion

29/10/2021

How does Covid end? The world is watching the UK to find out
29 Oct 2021 15:44
In response to mick233489
My partner’s niece went back to work a 3 weeks ago. Strong, healthy 26 year old. Double-jabbed and everything.
After a week she had tested positive and became quite ill. Hopefully there will be no long-term effects.
Anyone with any vulnerabilities might have died. But what do Johnson & Co care? Culling the herd of the weak and burdensome is simply good housekeeping to them.
View discussion

How does Covid end? The world is watching the UK to find out
29 Oct 2021 11:37
In response to WeAreAllRightNow
Who should be prosecuted most?
The governments which most aggressively pursued and endorsed the deforestation and environmental devastation which spawned Covid and all the dozens of lethal zoonotic pathogens of the last 20 years.
Those would be the Arch-Druids of Consumerism such as Britain, the US and other states which seem determined to destroy civilisation by aby means available.
Destroyed Habitat Creates the Perfect Conditions for Coronavirus to Emerge
COVID-19 may be just the beginning of mass pandemics. Scientific American.
View discussion

22/10/2021

With Covid infections rising, the Tories are conducting a deadly social experiment
22 Oct 2021 11:39
In response to mathsweb

With Covid infections rising, the Tories are conducting a deadly social experiment
22 Oct 2021 11:39
In response to mathsweb

Typical Johnsonian Zero-Foresight.
When he is forced to act in two weeks, he will accuse all who warned him of the obvious dangers, and urged him to act now, of being ‘Captain Hindsights’.
Big joke.
Many will haver died laughing by then because of his ‘wilful negligence’ (BMA)
View discussion

24/08/2021

The more children know of the natural world, the more they’ll want to protect it
24 Aug 2021 18:40
In response to ThisEarthling
What makes you think there’s no ‘nature’ in cities?
Foxes and squirrels used to live in the sticks.
Not any more.
View discussion

23/08/2021

The more children know of the natural world, the more they’ll want to protect it
23 Aug 2021 10:55
In response to propertypete79
Death-bed Consumerism is the ultimate self-proclaimed Utopia. Its advertising propaganda machine is a constant assumption that the world is perfect.
The sustainable, rational cooperative politics which is inevitable if we are to preserve civilisation merely sets out the aims and objectives. How these are achieved is for time and events to decide.
“Nearly all neo-pessimist apologetics consist in putting up a man of straw and knocking him down again. The man of straw is called Human Perfectibility. Socialists are accused of believing that society can be—and indeed, after the establishment of Socialism, will be—completely perfect; also that progress is inevitable. Debunking such beliefs is money for jam, of course.
The answer, which ought to be uttered more loudly than it usually is, is that Socialism is not perfectionist, perhaps not even hedonistic. Socialists don’t claim to be able to make the world perfect: they claim to be able to make it better. And any thinking Socialist will concede to the Catholic that when economic injustice has been righted, the fundamental problem of man’s place in the universe will still remain. But what the Socialist does claim is that that problem cannot be dealt with while the average human being’s preoccupations are necessarily economic.
It is all summed up in Marx’s saying that after Socialism has arrived, human history can begin. Meanwhile the neo-pessimists are there, well entrenched in the press of every country in the world, and they have more influence and make more converts among the young than we sometimes care to admit.”
ORWELL ‘AS I PLEASE 1943’
“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary.
The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. ”
~ORWELL ‘WHY SOCIALISTS DON’T BELIEVE IN FUN’ 1943
View discussion

The more children know of the natural world, the more they’ll want to protect it
23 Aug 2021 10:30
Easy to say, but the more children are bombarded with toxic consumerist propaganda the less they care about nature.
No prizes for guessing which side has the bigger propaganda machine, or who is winning the battle for hearts and minds so far.
Until eco-cidal lies and other forms of advertising are made illegal, the worthy words of charities and scientists will fall on ears deafened by Junk Media.
View discussion

The Turning Point review – how Charles Dickens built Bleak House
23 Aug 2021 10:22
In response to dowland
That Little Angel theory only works if you have some sympathy for the persona of the ‘diary’.
Little Angels don’t go around insisting that everyone loved them and they epitomised the Victorian domestic ideal. Did you honestly like her?
View discussion

22/08/2021

The Turning Point review – how Charles Dickens built Bleak House
22 Aug 2021 17:37
In response to Stebbs
Orwell seems to sum up Dickens place in the pantheon pretty accurately:
‘You cannot hold an imaginary conversation with a Dickens character as you can with, say, Peter Bezoukhov. And this is not merely because of Tolstoy’s greater seriousness, for there are also comic characters that you can imagine yourself talking to — Bloom, for instance, or Pecuchet, or even Wells’s Mr. Polly. It is because Dickens’s characters have no mental life.
They say perfectly the thing that they have to say, but they cannot be conceived as talking about anything else. They never learn, never speculate. Perhaps the most meditative of his characters is Paul Dombey, and his thoughts are mush.
Does this mean that Tolstoy’s novels are ‘better’ than Dickens’s? The truth is that it is absurd to make such comparisons in terms of ‘better’ and ‘worse’. If I were forced to compare Tolstoy with Dickens, I should say that Tolstoy’s appeal will probably be wider in the long run, because Dickens is scarcely intelligible outside the English-speaking culture; on the other hand, Dickens is able to reach simple people, which Tolstoy is not.
Tolstoy’s characters can cross a frontier, Dickens can be portrayed on a cigarette-card. But one is no more obliged to choose between them than between a sausage and a rose. Their purposes barely intersect.’
‘Charles Dickens’ – Orwell.
View discussion

The Turning Point review – how Charles Dickens built Bleak House
22 Aug 2021 17:26
In response to betmon
I love the book, but why he decided to make Esther such a self-important prig in her own head is a mystery. Is he experimenting with some embryonic modernist stream-of-consciousness – or what?
No wonder the dramatisations leave that bit out. But so do most critics, which is a surprise.
View discussion

The Turning Point review – how Charles Dickens built Bleak House
22 Aug 2021 14:48
In response to lazalex
Dickens popularity among the working classes was more because of the fact that his characters were ideal material for cigarette-cards and plays than because the masses had read his books in any number – even in serialisation.
This is probably more true today than ever. The number of people who have read Dickens is dwarfed by those who have consumed him via television.
View discussion

The Turning Point review – how Charles Dickens built Bleak House
22 Aug 2021 14:40
Not really much about Bleak House in this review, and least of all any insight into its central mystery – why the hell Dickens chose to inflict Esther Summerson’s nauseous 1st person account on the reader.
And Dicken’s ‘love of order’ is hardly expressed in his profusion of convoluted sub-plots, Deus Ex Machina and McGuffins.
View discussion

16/08/2021

Let’s not return to flawed exams. We have better ways to assess our children
16 Aug 2021 17:21
In response to mick233489
‘you can’t rely on your rich mummy and daddy’
You can if you have them. (No private tutors with their sheaf of back-papers on the state.)
The rest have to endure cramped noisy housing, polluted environments, obsolete equipment (if any), sub-standard diets and enduring class prejudice.
Which do you think get the best grades?
View discussion

Let’s not return to flawed exams. We have better ways to assess our children
16 Aug 2021 17:12
A depressurised education system first requires a depressurised society.
One which does not subject Humanity to a dog-eat-dog struggle for survival, and which doesn’t destroy the environment and civilisation with it.
The examination culture is designed to merely fit students for their place on this treadmill. It therefore has to go, but that will not be possible until the consumerism it sustains is dead.
View discussion

15/08/2021

Green issues expose Tory division and loner Boris Johnson’s distance from his party
15 Aug 2021 15:05
In response to ALittleFluffyBunny
Probably because the age of politics (as we know it) is over, and we are entering another dark age of Power-worship. As widely warned and predicted.
Trump would not be possible otherwise.
View discussion

12/08/2021

Antwerp: The Glory Years by Michael Pye review – the medieval Mammon
12 Aug 2021 17:12
In response to confusedofengland
The Medieval ended with the Renaissance, and especially with the Reformation.
With Erasmus, Copernicus, and the others who put Humanity into ‘perspective’.
The medieval died when painters switched from circular haloes to elliptical ones, like Kepler’s Laws of Motion.
View discussion

11/08/2021

There is no ‘getting back to normal’ with climate breakdown
11 Aug 2021 12:03
Everything proposed by almost every government is just another desperate attempt to prolong the deathbed agonies of toxic Consumerism. Creating abundant sustainable energy will just be the Nirvana of the junk industry, and the vicious suicidal cycle of environmental devastation will drag on to its inevitable catastrophe for us.
The future is a a race between the profit-mongers and the awakening of mass ecological awareness, or political consciousness – as Marx would have called it.
View discussion

10/08/2021

Emojis aren’t debasing language – they’re enriching it
10 Aug 2021 14:15
In response to Tonda99
Try explaining how emojis have evolved using emojis.
They haven’t ‘evolved’ beyond playground face-pulling.
View discussion

Emojis aren’t debasing language – they’re enriching it
10 Aug 2021 12:29
In response to panpies
And look what happened to China, the prisoner of pictograms.
A culture frozen in time and riddled by perpetual wars and tyrannies.
View discussion

Emojis aren’t debasing language – they’re enriching it
10 Aug 2021 12:24
The tendency of pictograms is to freeze meaning, tethering it to the dominant image of the time it was created.
The ’emoji’ for a woman might be the stylised image of a figure grinding flour, a schoolmaster might be a figure beating a pupil – thereby hardwiring the stereotypes into the culture, petrifying both. Emojis definitely debase language, hinder change and railroad thought along ancient tracks.
Phonetic language does the opposite, by evolving according to the culture. It’s the main reason that Greek culture eventually fostered the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions while China was still languishing in the arms of ‘Harmony’
.View discussion

06/08/2021

Johnson’s coalmine quip shows he thinks the climate crisis is a joke
6 Aug 2021 16:26
In response to irreligious
‘Taking radical positions on matters such as white privilege/guilt, hate speech’
is what people of conscience have always done.
Tories have none, and will increasingly support any attempt to foster a society fuelled by hate and division.
It’s a struggle as old as money, and a clear indication that US style fascism is on the rise, not least in the Tory Party, especially in the bitter fight ahead to radically restructure society and culture to reverse global warming, or prepare for the grim aftermath of failing to do so..
.View discussion

Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream
6 Aug 2021 16:13
In response to TeawithLemon
is what people of conscience have always done.
Tories have none, and will increasingly support any attempt to foster a society fuelled by hate and division.
It’s a struggle as old as money, and a clear indication that US style fascism is on the rise, not least in the Tory Party, especially in the bitter fight ahead to radically restructure society and culture to reverse global warming, or prepare for the grim aftermath of failing to do so..
.View discussion

Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream
6 Aug 2021 16:13
In response to TeawithLemon
The Taliban don’t, so wy should the Trumpiban?
View discussion

Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream
6 Aug 2021 15:59
Trump is just another bi-product of the impending climate disaster.
By replacing rat-sack competition with humanist cooperation, any meaningful attempt to reverse global warming will inevitably destroy the legacy privileges and resulting toxic identity of those addicted to the status quo.
Pre-apocalyptic fevers like this are always historic turning points, and often result in a return to primitive superstition, witch-burnings and the idolisation of anyone with the ruthlessness to discredit rational causation.
View discussion

Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream
6 Aug 2021 15:49
In response to EnglishroG
‘which treats ordinary white people with hate and contempt.‘
Any grownup evidence for that, or is it just another Fun-fact from the Trumpiban Quran?
Stop hiding behind baby-words like ‘woke’ and deal in realities.
View discussion

Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream
6 Aug 2021 15:44
In response to Onetwosevenfivethree
‘the more disturbing thought’ is that so many Americans are as psychopathic as Trump.
That America is actually that SICK.
View discussion

Johnson’s muddle over Covid is a foretaste of his thinking on climate change. Be afraid
6 Aug 2021 11:55
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
First of all, the patient has to want to be changed.
Removing all subsidies to the fossil fuel lobby and punitive tax on all pointless consumer junk would be ‘the start of the beginning’.
“Within the UK, thousands of new good green jobs could promote democratic and decentralised climate action today – action that would go some way to repairing persistent class, race and other social and economic inequities.”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/the-uk-claims-to-be-a-world-leader-in-fighting-climate-change-its-wrong/
View discussion

Johnson’s muddle over Covid is a foretaste of his thinking on climate change. Be afraid
6 Aug 2021 11:45
In response to morkmurk
Nonsense.
Our Co2 emissions are only this low because of our long-dead coal industry – something which Johnson is trying to revive, apparently. This accident is our only claim to fame.
Everything else is just a fat promise, while abolishing grants on domestic solar panels.
“the UK is outsourcing a significant proportion of its emissions to other, often poorer countries.
This isn’t the only area where the reality falls short of the rhetoric. The UK gives more subsidies to fossil fuel companies than any other country in Europe; recently granted new oil and gas exploration licenses and permits for the North Sea;” The UK claims to be a world leader in fighting climate change. It’s wrong
View discussion

Johnson’s muddle over Covid is a foretaste of his thinking on climate change. Be afraid
6 Aug 2021 11:33
Relying on the boffins and boardrooms is futile, not least because any miracle in energy production will simply be eaten up by increased consumption and further waste of resources.
The only way to cut CO2 production is to eradicate the problem at its root – the eco-cidal Junkie Consumerism we are addicted to.
Nothing else matters if we want to preserve a civilisation worth living in.
View discussion

04/08/2021

If the US really cared about freedom in Cuba, it would end its punishing sanctions
4 Aug 2021 15:29
In response to expatinscandinavia
Cuba in the 80’s was the product of the American embargo.
View discussion

If the US really cared about freedom in Cuba, it would end its punishing sanctions
4 Aug 2021 15:27
In response to scrambling
Look at the map.
If it wanted to and had the resources, Cuba could choke much of US oil traffic in and out of Houston.
View discussion

If the US really cared about freedom in Cuba, it would end its punishing sanctions
4 Aug 2021 15:2
It is useful to compare US hostility to Cuba to its indifference to the Seychelles.
Both nominally Marxist regimes.
Only one controls the gateway to the Gulf of Mexico and the oil refineries and tanker ports of Houston.
The other has been left to its own devices as a peaceful socialist state. The one the world forgot about – and so survived unsanctioned and uninvaded.
View discussion

02/08/2021

Today it’s cool, tomorrow it’s junk. We have to act against our throwaway culture
2 Aug 2021 12:48
In response to Veraanthony
‘It’s ‘seductions’ will be forced to end soon enough when the old whore is riddled with the clap. But by then it will be too late.
View discussion

Today it’s cool, tomorrow it’s junk. We have to act against our throwaway culture
2 Aug 2021 12:46
Correction.
It was Junk from the start.
We are addicted to it – economically, politically and even psychologically. They even have the nerve to call it ‘Retail Therapy‘.
This is not the way to run a planet, for long.
View discussion

28/07/2021

How many years until we must act on climate? Zero, say these climate thinkers
28 Jul 2021 17:19
In response to John_in_Kent
Your ‘Bordeaux’ would experience hurricanes, food shortages, communications and power blackouts, the spread of unfamiliar virulent species escaping the desertification of the real Bordeaux, mass bankruptcies, increases in criminality of all sorts, an epidemic of mental illness…
Sounds lovely.
The cost of funerals is going up all the time. Get a free pen.
View discussion

How many years until we must act on climate? Zero, say these climate thinkers
28 Jul 2021 17:07
In response to AldKim
Just goes to show that using the pettifogging terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are poison to critical political thought.
‘Sinister’? ‘Right?
Never mind the unshakeable superstitious cultural bias of millennia.
See any Crucifixion or Last Judgement.
View discussion

25/07/2021

If Britain wants to resolve the Northern Ireland protocol, this is not the way to do it
25 Jul 2021 18:39
In response to spotthelemon
How will no border checks prevent smuggling, and all its associated evils? How will doing nothing uphold standards and prevent the undermining of British industry?
View discussion

If Britain wants to resolve the Northern Ireland protocol, this is not the way to do it
25 Jul 2021 15:47
In response to ServiusGalba
Will you write to all the drug-barons, people-traffickers and gun-runners asking them nicely to not turn Northern Ireland into Smuggler’s Cove?
View discussion

19/07/2021

Why are Tory councillors in Essex censoring artwork?
19 Jul 2021 11:47
In response to KaneClements

Psychopathic behaviour is often caused by an acute Identity Crisis, at times when the status quo is perceptibly obsolete and incapable of preventing the collapse of order and security.
In the past, the causes of this obsolescence were always a matter of speculation, often involving the supernatural. Now we have scientific evidence. And as a result, our psychopathic behaviour is even deeper, its denialism reaching Room 101 proportions, when 2+2=5 if it means keeping The Party safe.
View discussion

14/07/2021

World Rugby makes encouraging start with ‘six pillars’ to build a new game
14 Jul 2021 17:01
In response to tidemarc
I look forward to to the time when the game is again about evasion rather than collision.

Then you want the pitch widened to match the modern professional player.
The game is 150 years old and players are now a different shape to their 19th century predecessors. Let’s be expansive. Let’s insist on minimum pitch dimensions at the professional level to stop the rugby stranglers and let’s do away with the maximum or at least increase the width of the pitch.
Gregor Townsend ‘Pitch Size Matters’.
View discussion

09/07/2021

It may be slow, but retro TV has been a lifeline during lockdown
9 Jul 2021 12:53 In response to Hazardchase63
Then there’s its sister series, ‘Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent of Man’. With old men left to die at riverbanks.
Simon Sharma and Mary Beard eat your hearts out.
View discussion

Win or lose on Sunday, England have given us something to be proud of
8 Jul 2021 13:597
In response to GuerrillasInTheMidst
The vast majority of fans at Wembley were very white, like the majority of British people.
View discussion

Win or lose on Sunday, England have given us something to be proud of
8 Jul 2021 13:53
In response to GuerrillasInTheMidst
A loud, nasty sizeable, significant minority – which cannot be ignored.
View discussion

08/07/2021

Win or lose on Sunday, England have given us something to be proud of
8 Jul 2021 13:47
In response to ruffledfeathers

If the police are homicidal racists, what’s wrong with Defunding them?
Try finding out what ‘defunding’ means.
‘Almost overnight and in direct response to protests, some mayors and other elected leaders have reversed their position on police funding. The mayor of LA said he would look to cut as much as $150m from the police, just two days after he pushed forward a city budget that was increasing it by 7%. A New York councilman has called for a $1bn divestment from the NYPD. In Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, San Francisco and other cities, local policymakers have expressed support for some form of defunding or opposing police budget increases. Most radically, in Minneapolis, council members have discussed potentially disbanding the embattled police department altogether. Colleges, public school systems, museums and other institutions are also divesting from police.’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/defunding-the-police-us-what-does-it-mean
View discussion

26/06/2021

Here’s how a progressive alliance would actually work24 Jun 2021 16:22
As if there is a choice.
Anthropogenic global warming forces us to act cooperatively.
If we don’t, nobody will want to win elections.
Or fiddle about the benefits of Proportional Representation while Rome burns.
View discussion

10/06/21

Fingered for failings he’d forgotten, Matt Hancock wriggles free
10 Jun 2021 20:55
In response to R3dh3ad
Highly unlikely he wouldn’t. It’s part of Labour culture.
Not to mention being featured in more than one TV dramatisation, most recently in ‘The Indian Doctor’. So many of his constituents who watch daytime TV would also know about it.
Either way, he knows the power of the local health authorities and the community – a weapon which Johnson was terrified of since it would revive a community spirit he has spent his political life trying to crush.
Johnson has no ‘charisma’, not that it means damn thing. He is a proven liar and a charlatan who has exploited the Pandemic for his political gain. At the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives.
View discussion [DELETED BY GUARDIAN]

Fingered for failings he’d forgotten, Matt Hancock wriggles free
10 Jun 2021 20:37
I fail to see why the Guardian repeatedly deletes any refutation of the absurd claim that ‘Corbyn would have been worse’, while allowing those allegations free space.
Clearly Corbyn would know the history of the 1962 Welsh smallpox outbreak, and the role of the community and local health systems in containing it.
Likewise, he would not have hesitated to implement the same level of community involvement – which would have reduced British deaths to South Korean levels.
The very idea of ‘Community’ is taboo to Johnson and his cult. [DELETED BY GUARDIAN]
View discussion

Fingered for failings he’d forgotten, Matt Hancock wriggles free
10 Jun 2021 19:35
To those making absurd claims that ‘Corbyn would have been worse’.
Knowing what we do about Corbyn, one thing is certain. He would not have been terrified of implementing the wholesale Community Testing which was need to suppress and contain the Pandemic.
He would have known the value and power of regional health authorities from his early Labour history lessons. Especially the Welsh smallpox outbreak in 1962.
He would have reduced the number of deaths to Korean levels.
Johnson didn’t use this proven weapon because it would have revived a national sense of community identity which is the mortal enemy of his squalid dog-eat-dog dogma.
View discussion [POST DELETED TWICE]

Fingered for failings he’d forgotten, Matt Hancock wriggles free
10 Jun 2021 19:22
In response to tanzanite
No poker player would show his full hand before today.
And whatever else he is, Cummings is a political poker player – or we would still be a member of the EU.
And he would not have spilled the beans if he didn’t have the kind of evidence most people now have of their conversations and correspondence.
View discussion

09/06/2021

Cursed and compromised but Euro 2020’s irresistible circus rolls on
9 Jun 2021 16:35
In response to morton51
You can go on pretending that up is down and black is white and demanding your phoney, sociopathic ‘rights’ until your neck turns red, but the evidence is there if you dare confront it.
Which you daren’t. Which is why more lives were lost on British soil in a year of Covid than between 1939-45. Those people had ‘rights’ too, especially the right to life. A right your sort denied them.
‘We find evidence that mass outdoor events were consistent with more cases and deaths, even after controlling for measurable characteristics of local areas.
We find that a football match is consistent with around six additional Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people, two additional Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 people, and three additional excess deaths per 100,000 people.
This effect is slightly stronger for the areas of away teams in March, and slightly weaker for matches in February.
These results suggest caution in returning to unrestricted spectator attendance at matches. We caveat our analysis though by noting that stadium access and egress routes can be adapted such that some of the opportunities for the spread of an airborne virus could be mitigated. We recommend that the relevant authorities conduct pilot events before determining to what extent fans can return to mass outdoor events.’
https://cepr.org/sites/default/files/CovidEconomics47.pdf
View discussion

08/06/2021

Pressured by Biden, Johnson may finally face reality on Northern Ireland
8 Jun 2021 00:14
In response to Tiger78
I know the realities first hand. Like the companies which can’t trade, and the long-term residents who have paid decades of taxes and now don’t have citizenship.
Which laws alter those realities?
We’d love to know.~
Tell me how I can employ the same European specialists I used to.
It would salvage our company from disaster.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @AngelArtsPhoto@jason_carl_foxand 2 others
Prefer what? Gym monkeys ARE junkies, but hooked on different drugs. And their addiction/muscle dysmorphia is only made worse with every hit.
I pity them, like all sick people. In spite of the violent & criminal side-effects of their derangement.
Violence may be serious in men with body dysmorphic disorderncbi.nlm.nih.gov
12:57 PM · Jun 8, 2021· Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Thomas57555988 and @BBCNews
Tell that to the racists. Politics created their racism and only politics can eradicate it. Your answer is to do nothing. To appease racism. How does that make you any different?
12:18 AM · Jun 8, 2021·Twitter Web App

07/06/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @newscientist
Yet another source of Zootic Pathogens.
If the Climate don’t get us the Pandemics will. (My money’s on the pandemics).
‘recent pandemics are a consequence of our global financial and economic systems that prize economic growth at any cost. “
IPBES Guest Article: COVID-19 Stimulus Measures Must Save Lives, Protect Livelihoods, and Safeguard…IPBES Expert Guest Article by Professors Josef Settele, Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondizioipbes.net
8:06 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCNews
‘Why?’ Simple. Because all Backlash politics in living memory instantly brands any campaign against injustice as ‘Marxist’.
Ask Ghandi, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela.
If the Knee is Marxist, then the more Marxism the better.
7:30 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

Pressured by Biden, Johnson may finally face reality on Northern Ireland
7 Jun 2021 15:20
‘Brexit is not a disaster …’
It is for generations of businesses which have come to rely on free movement, and for the same generations of people – and even their children – who now find themselves in danger of expulsion from the country they grew up in.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @BrianMaudling@headsthey and @davidschneider
What ‘hindsight’? Your doublethink is showing again.
Predicting each disaster has only needed ”2+2=4 FORESIGHT. The basis of all rational thought and policy-making.
1:05 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @seanjmcg and @guardian
Every obscene public glorification in bronze or stone of slavery was designed to induce collective amnesia and ‘make people feel good’.
Those lying statues were erected in the name of history.
Destroying them reveals the truth.
12:49 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @lynneratcliff1@MayorofLondon and @England
Because the fight against racism and inequality IS political. It can’t be anything else.
Those who seek to disrupt the Knee are supporting racism and should be ejected – just as if they were doing monkey-chants or throwing bananas.
12:44 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @gazilapod and @BBCNews
Vaccine immunity is NOT for life – even without a variant per month.
Jab3 boosters planned for September. All are vulnerable, even the jabbed.
Your beloved ‘Normal’ eco-cidal Consumerism is the cause of every zootic pathogen of the last 30 years.
Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global WarmingScience is now as unanimous about the causes of Global Pandemics as it is about the causes of Global Warming.(See below.)___________________________________________________________________ Some of …biginabox.com
12:13 PM · Jun 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

04/06/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @BaconBantam@AndyQui29237736and 2 others
So you caught it from someone who didn’t KNOW they had it and who ignored social distancing.
And now you want everyone to go through the same process. Unbelievable.
Isn’t that what Trump did?
8:46 PM · Jun 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @BaconBantam@AndyQui29237736and 2 others
How do you know? Asymptomatic anti-vaxxers and other denialist nutters have undoubtedly killed by transmitting a disease they didn’t know they had.
And the simplest way to do that is to disregard social distancing – which is your homicidal policy.
8:41 PM · Jun 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @BaconBantam@AndyQui29237736and 2 others
Current vaccines won’t be any use when the virus evolves beyond their powers. Which it will under your plan of allowing mass infection. And totally useless against the new pandemics down the line, unleashed by your pillaging Consumerism Especially with most of the world untreated
5:24 PM · Jun 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @ThaisMoth and @MichaelRosenYes
Nobody yet knows if India was the ‘place of origin’. India was failed by Britain exporting our new variant there in 2020, which mutated into Delta.
Britain was one of the countries which failed most in 2020. Our obscene per capita death toll apportions blame more accurately.
3:54 PM · Jun 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Stability merely discredits democracy when wielded by the series of minority governments delivered by FPTP. Which was a major cause of the Brexit Identity Crisis, and the ongoing cultural collapse into gangster-nationalism and division.
3:33 PM · Jun 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @John19289204@Vibulanus and @guardian
The ones ‘coining it’ are criminal sociopathic frauds and quacks like Wakefield.
When you’re ready with a serious argument, get back.
Pick the bones of these first. 2 dozen studies and counting.
Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global WarmingScience is now as unanimous about the causes of Global Pandemics as it is about the causes of Global Warming.(See below.)___________________________________________________________________ Some of …biginabox.com
3:24 PM · Jun 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

03/06/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @PeterDaszak@PeterHotez and @WHO
But that would be to focus on hard reality. To highlight the eco-sabotage of toxic, narcotic Consumerism. And junkies do not put their dealer in jail. Far more comforting to blame an Evil Scientist in an extinct volcano.
8:41 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @alexandretakacs@cdjstrydomand 2 others
Which ‘politics’? The ‘politics’ of sustainability and a healthy future for civilisation?
Bring it on.
Your opposition to the science is clearly political. The politics of blood-soaked JUNKIE CONSUMERISM.
The New Barbarism.
4:13 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @alexandretakacs@cdjstrydomand 2 others
Which did I ‘forge’? The ones from @newscientist , @NatGeoUS , @TheLancet , @sciam ?
All saying the same thing. That your Junkie Consumerism has to die to save civilisation.
Your paranoia is now complete.
Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global WarmingScience is now as unanimous about the causes of Global Pandemics as it is about the causes of Global Warming.(See below.)___________________________________________________________________ Some of …biginabox.com
4:03 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @charleslatham9 and @guardian
Cheer the fight against injustice, inequality and racism. If that equates to ‘Marxism’, so be it.
If your creed fails to meet those objectives, you need to reboot it. But you never will, You merely pervert a word you don’t understand to try and defend racism and hate.
3:20 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @alexandretakacs@cdjstrydomand 2 others
“Afelt et al. (2018)—linked deforestation with the emergence of coronaviruses and novel infectious diseases, and Zimmer (2019) indicated that scientific evidence suggests that deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans.”
The Economy, Climate Change and Infectious Diseases: Links and Policy ImplicationsThis short paper provides a modeling framework for unifying the economy, climate change and the outbreak of infectious diseases such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. We stress that continuous growth…link.springer.com
3:05 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxR
Replying to @alexandretakacs@cdjstrydomand 2 others
There are DOZENS of studies which all confirm the same high level of PROBABILITY. The same level we have for anthropogenic Climate Change.
Both far more certain than your paranoid conspiracy theories of Dr Evil’s plot to destroy Humanity.
Refute if you can
Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global WarmingScience is now as unanimous about the causes of Global Pandemics as it is about the causes of Global Warming.(See below.)___________________________________________________________________ Some of …biginabox.com
3:00 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @SimonPirani1
Tackling Climate Change AND Bio-Change – the ever-growing threat from anthropogenic Pandemics.
“As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of … our limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. “
IPBES Guest Article: COVID-19 Stimulus Measures Must Save Lives, Protect Livelihoods, and Safeguard…IPBES Expert Guest Article by Professors Josef Settele, Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondizioipbes.net
12:34 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @mediaguardian
Most of the media is controlled by Advertisers of consumerist junk which can only be produced by environmental devastation – which creates both Climate Change and Zootic Pathogens like Covid.
A healthy world = one free of toxic Consumerism.
12:12 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @BBCNews
IF the G7 meant business, it would impose a ban on all products dependent on wholesale deforestation – the main factor in releasing & magnifying zootic pathogens such as ZIKA, MERS, EBOLA, HIV, SARS, SWINE FLU, and many others in the last 30 years.
Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans.
As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.nationalgeographic.com
12:01 PM · Jun 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

02/06/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @alexandretakacs@PeterDaszak and @K_G_Andersen
READ THE REPORT
“the high-affinity binding of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human/human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution… strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of manipulation.”
4:50 PM · Jun 2, 2021·Twitter Web App

31/05/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite and @Bradholler
Getting out of marriages on the strength of a theological loophole?
It’s Henry VIII all over again. Lots of loopholes for some folks.
5:59 PM · May 31, 2021·Twitter Web AppView

28/05/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @robinthemint and @michaelwhite
The Very Thing which influenced voters was the lies and perversions of the billionaire, phone-hacking, tax-dodging, drug-dealing, money-laundering gutter media.
Aided & abetted by the meaningless toxic fog-terms ‘Left’, ‘Right’ and ‘Centre’
5:33 PM · May 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

If Dominic Cummings’ assault on Johnson fails, he will have only himself to blame
28 May 2021 17:13
In response to tellingtruthtopower
‘the UK isn’t even in the worst 10 in Europe for death rate.’
It was among the worst per capita before the hijacked vaccine haul arrived. A real world-beater.
Better even than Trump’s LaLaLand. Which took some doing.
It didn’t need Cummings to confirm that Johnson was ignoring scientific evidence and was only concerned with profits and getting snouts back into feelgood troughs.
The current polls are merely a final condemnation of degraded, dehumanised, junk-addicted British culture. A nation which would kill for its next fix of burgers and beer.
View discussion

If Dominic Cummings’ assault on Johnson fails, he will have only himself to blame
28 May 2021 17:02
‘Labour and other opponents of the government should focus on the PM’s much less forgivable failures in the autumn, when scientists were screaming for a swift lockdown while Johnson put his fingers in his ears’
Anyone watching PMQ’s last year will have noticed the pattern of Starmer ‘screaming’ alongside the scientists, especially in the autumn – and being rewarded with juvenile taunts of ‘Captain Hindsight’.
Was was rich coming from a PM who had obviously learned nothing from the Spring crisis.
The bizarre slander that Starmer was using ’20-20 hindsight’ by urging Johnson to use common or garden 2+2=4 Foresight is another symptom of the pathological moral and intellectual vacuum of deathbed nationalism.
View discussion

The shapeshifting Tories have grown their base – but this could be their downfall
28 May 2021 13:40
In response to Hak_a_dalan
‘..for the foreseeable future, the English nationalist tail is going to wag the UK dog.’
Then this nationalism ‘doesn’t care’ about the cull of care-home residents, or that ministers lied to cover it up. This reveals nationalism’s slender grasp of the concept of ‘care’.
Hancock is today faced with thousands of ‘substantiations’ of Cummings’ testimony on oath. Both he and Johnson are left with no alternative but to brand the entire care-home sector and the bereaved families as liars. Or as too stupid to understand ‘how these things work’.
Johnson has his own potent list of insults for the electorate. Maybe he doesn’t care, believing that they like being insulted.
As the old nursery rhyme goes:
‘Don’t Care’ was made to care.
Don’t Care was hung.
Don’t Care was put in a pot
And boiled ’till he was done.
‘View discussion

27/05/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @BBCNews
It certainly did until the vaccines began to take effect.
Worse even than Trump’s LaLaLand.
In reality, Johnson did nothing to reduce deaths, and everything he could to increase them.
Ignoring the scientists, the experience of sensible countries, his No10 advisors, and Starmer.
9:22 PM · May 27, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @DaviesAndrew and @bbclaurak
You presumably don’t care about the blatant cull of care-home residents.
So the concept of ‘care’ must be very alien to you.
In that case could you please rephrase your question in words you understand?
EG: ‘How can this crime be effectively concealed forever?’
9:17 PM · May 27, 2021·Twitter Web App

Where were the critics who could have stopped Johnson leading us to Covid tragedy?
27 May 2021 14:22
‘Keir Starmer’s team decided to simply defer to focus groups’
Is that why, in PMQs, Starmer repeatedly implored Johnson to take the same actions scientists were advising? Especially over the Autumn lockdown, when all informed opinion was in favour of a ‘firebreak’ Lockdown. Which Johnson bizarrely labelled as ’20-20 hindsight, and were then imposed far too late, and totally sabotaged by the crowd-pleasing Xmas break.
All journalists have to do is check PMQ’s in Hansard:
Monday 12th 2020.
Starmer. ” the worst thing that the Prime Minister can do is not act quickly and decisively enough, and keep coming back to this House every couple of weeks with a new plan that does not work and is not up to the scale of the task. We need to break that cycle, finally get on top of the virus ..“
HANSARD

14/10/2020
Starmer: “I have just listened to what the Prime Minister said about his strategy to get R below 1, but I cannot think of a single scientist who backs it. He will know that the chief medical officer said on Monday that he, the chief medical officer, is—his words:
“not confident, and nor is anyone confident, that the tier 3 proposals for the highest rates…would be enough”.
That is tier 3—the highest tier. So why is the Prime Minister so confident that his approach will get the R rate below 1—so confident—or is that no longer the Government plan?”
Hansard
Lockdown announced 31st October. Too late for too many.
View discussion

26/05/2021

Most of the advice Johnson ignored until too late was being urged on him by Starmer in the house at least two weeks before the inevitable u-turn.
The Autumn lockdown especially.
In response to Starmer’s scientifically based advice, the constant schoolboy response from Johnson was the accusation of ’20-20 hindsight.’ He was only interested in getting the label of ‘Captain Hindsight’ to stick to the red-top front pages.
In reality, Johnson was incapable of basic 2+2=4 foresight. The basis of all rational thought.
Starmer’s line on Covid seems to have largely mirrored that taken by Cummings.
Or vice versa, depending on who was reading whose homework. Both clearly knew that Johnson is the unfunniest joke in history.

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @jediknight49 and @ByDonkeys
128,000 lives later they should care. ‘Angry’ is the word you’re trying to avoid.
As everyone should be at Johnson’s homicidal incompetence. Especially officials forced to lie to cover his crimes – which is why Cummings resigned.
You didn’t watch the testimony, did you?
7:24 PM · May 26, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MattCarr55@brexit_sham and @GoodwinMJ
Always depressing to see people failing to pick up money on the street. Missing an open goal.
Letting their gripes distract them from the greater objective.
More like you and Johnson will last ten years.
7:16 PM · May 26, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Who said ‘we are the worst’? There’s.. and..
But whoever IS worse it’s no consolation. The point is many governments were doing better by merely being sensible, and Johnson ignored them especially in Autumn 2020.
No Foresight OR Hindsight. Captain No-Sight.
Not fit to run a raffle.
7:04 PM · May 26, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @NUFCTOON1892 and @michaelwhite
You mean any bungling British government.
Elsewhere, governments were behaving rationally.
Johnson not only refused to impose LD2, but resented being bullied into LD1!
5:16 PM · May 26, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Every decision Johnson ducked was being recommended by Starmer in the house.
Especially the Autumn lockdown. Johnson has no ‘hindsight’.
Worse, no 2+2=4 foresight.
5:13 PM · May 26, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @AlanJamesRowe2@Kev_Collierand 2 others
I don’t have to do anything.
You LURVVE Boris because he killed thousands of people. Do you think you’re in the majority?
When would you have imposed Lockdown 2? When everyone including the scientists, Starmer & Cummings were saying?
Or when Johnson was forced to – too late?
5:09 PM · May 26, 2021· Twitter Web App

24/05/2021

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech
24 May 2021 13:09
In response to ShortTrousers
Have you checked your facts?
Open the link and tell the good people what ‘nonsense’ you see.
This?
‘Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including influenza, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people. Combined with highly interconnected globalised economies and rapid transport, this makes pandemics a rapidly growing risk.‘
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30305-3/fulltext

Or this?
It’s pretty well established that deforestation can be a strong driver of infectious disease transmission,” says Andy MacDonald, a disease ecologist at the Earth Research Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s a numbers game: The more we degrade and clear forest habitats, the more likely it is that we’re going to find ourselves in these situations where epidemics of infectious diseases occur.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans

Or this?
“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”..
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933223-300-rescue-plan-for-nature-how-to-fix-the-biodiversity-crisis/

You can’t deny the science of biodiversity without denying the climatology of global warming.
What else do you deny?
View discussionT

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech
24 May 2021 12:59
In response to Kropotkin72
‘the flaws in “civilized” man are embedded in the species’
Garbage.
This Misanthropic myth has been repeatedly debunked by science on several levels.
The essential human characteristic is the Reciprocal Social altruism. The cooperative instinct which caused our brains to expand to the size of a planet.
The flaws of property-based power structures such as modern Consumerism and its ancestors are definitely ’embedded’. And so is the sociopathic indoctrination that prolongs the cult.
But these aberrations are only a mere 10,000 years old. The blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
View discussion

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech24 May 2021 12:52
In response to VoiceofReason08
They’d better make up their minds to an age of sustainable Austerity, because the post-disaster alternative is definitely not what they want.
They would not like it up ’em at all.
View discussion

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech
24 May 2021 12:50
In response to dsdsdsdsds
Science could easily cater for the needs of a planet where resources are shared, not squandered and used to create hate and division.
But there is no profit in that.
Consumerism needs a permanent suicidal orgy to survive.
View discussion

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech24 May 2021 12:45
In response to anniegyg
If you bothered to open your mind and the link, you will find over 20 peer-reviewed confirmations of the consensus that consumerism is not only destroying the climate but driving and amplifying wild viruses into dangerous proximity with people. From almost every reputable journal from New Scientist and Nature to the Lancet. All in one place for your convenience.
Try again.
https://biginabox.com/2021/02/02/why-we-are-just-as-much-to-blame-for-covid-19-as-we-are-for-global-warming/
View discussion

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech
24 May 2021 12:26

‘Our civilisation is underpinned by extractivism, a belief that the Earth is ours to exploit, and the nonsensical idea of infinite growth within a finite territory. Material possessions as markers of achievement, a drive to consume for the sake of consumption, and blindness to the long-term consequences of our actions, have all become part of the culture of global capitalism.

“There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – us. As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. “
https://ipbes.net/covid19stimulus
View discussion

The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech24 May 2021 12:22
First and foremost it requires that all concerned agencies seize the golden opportunity of Covid, the most tangible and widespread evidence of environmental catastrophe yet.
And one for which our addiction to consumerism is as much to blame as it is for global warming.
A precious year’s powerful propaganda has been squandered by virtually every relevant charity and prominent activist. In spite of the unanimous scientific consensus that this and other pandemics past and future are caused by our industrial deforestation and farming methods.
https://biginabox.com/2021/02/02/why-we-are-just-as-much-to-blame-for-covid-19-as-we-are-for-global-warming/
View discussion

23/05/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCNews
The BBC’s reputation cannot be damaged by a rogue team which broke all the BBC rules – 25 years ago. It is much bigger than them.
Meanwhile this government wants to deny justice to families of those murdered by British troops.
Pathological hypocrisy.
2:13 PM · May 23, 2021·Twitter Web App

10/04/2021

Michael Lewis: ‘We were incentivised to have a bad pandemic response’
10 May 2021 11:57
In response to edmundberk
‘The UK has actually done well on what is controllable.‘
Given a worse death-toll per-capita than Trump’s Wackyworld, Johnson has ‘done well’ to avoid being tarred and feathered, I agree. Covid is his Falklands War.
For that ‘world-beating’ position, we can thank his total failure to implement Community Action Cells (aka ‘T.T.I.S.) used to ‘control’ the recent outbreak of Ebola in the Congo – Communities are too dangerous to tory politics.
Not to mention his refusal to enforce lockdowns and other measures until weeks after Starmer told him to in the House – when it was too late.
And now he proposes to return us to the same old ‘normal’ environmental sabotage that both creates zootic pathogens like Covid, and which spews increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the air.
Must do rather better to become a useful member of society.
Boris does not seem to show the slightest interest in the tasks he is given, has a flimsy grasp of the truth, and fails to take any responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
I am recommending a meeting with the school councillor.
View discussion

04/05/2021

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 17:37
In response to Pol1ticalAn1ma
‘Have you considered that actually we all know about climate change, but that we also think we are doing enough already?’
Clearly we don’t ‘all’ know, and are by and large therefore apathetic to action, or even hostile to it. Especially if it demands any degree of sacrifice.
You seem to have the standard level of phobia to science, or you would have referred to some by now.
Let’s try you with some from the Lancet this time.
‘Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including influenza, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people. Combined with highly interconnected globalised economies and rapid transport, this makes pandemics a rapidly growing risk.’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30305-3/fulltext
I’ve noticed that recommendations are in inverse proportion to the amount of science in a post.
A sure sign of mass denialism.
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 17:23
In response to Pol1ticalAn1mal
Sorry I touched a nerve!
And what policies would you recommend to the queues of Junk-Addicts outside Macdonalds? What else would you call them given the chemically addictive nature of many of the key ingredients in Junkfood?
Time you became a ‘keyboard consumer’ of the science and arrived at informed decisions.
Addictive Ingredients in Fast Food and their Effect on Your Body.
Producing junkfood means deforestation. Deforestation spawns Pandemics, and spews CO2.
Cattle belch even worse greenhouse gasses.
Try and keep up.
It’s not as if you haven’t been given the information.
‘Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including influenza, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people.
Combined with highly interconnected globalised economies and rapid transport, this makes pandemics a rapidly growing risk.’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30305-3/fulltext

View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 14:37
In response to Underwhelmed99
Science does not have a magic wand to eradicate Consumerism.
Only politics can do that.
And the people are too addicted to Consumerist Junk to vote any politicians with the guts to enact the radical policies needed.
We are being led to disaster by the nose.
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 14:34
In response to Underwhelmed99
The proven method of reducing birthrates is increased Equality of opportunity Heathcare and education.
The countries with the lowest birthrates are by far the most damaging to the environment.
So Increasing Equality and Education while globally agreeing that the era of the Consumerist Orgy is over is the only credible way of preventing Climate Change and deadly pandemics.
It may well mean returning to 1950’s levels of personal consumption, but that never hurt anyone.
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 14:25
In response to TonyStopyra
It’s equally tragic that you won’t get many recommendations going around saying that people will have to live within the limits of sustainability.
In other words, drug-addicts don’t squeal on their dealers.
Since the Lockdown was lifted, Junk-Baron Macdonalds reported a huge increase in sales.
Every one I’ve passed recently has had queues around the block.
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 14:21
In response to amorphia
Then find the part of you that pays attention to the science.
And can do the arithmetic of per capita consumption figures for the affluent Junk-Addicted West, which is responsible for the bulk of deforestation and environmental sabotage which causes both Climate change and zootic pathogenic Pandemics.
Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans.
When not forced to worship the god of Profit, and live naturally, Humanity is not a problem. The Power and Greed of a few ruthless corporations and paranoid maniacs are the problem.
“As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans/
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 14:13
In response to wheresmehat
Globalised trade with the East for silks and spices.
If you don’t blame Consumerism for Covid and other Pandemics, you also find it innocent of causing Climate Change – in denial of the science.
The issue of misinformation has never been highlighted so graphically. But not this time by the Trumps and Bolsonaros, but by the very agencies which promote climate science.
Even the right-thinking scientific Guardian has deleted a previous post of mine, riddled with references to hard research, which drew attention to the toxic triangle of Climate-change, Pandemics and Consumerism.
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 12:03
In response to wheresmehat
Sorry, but you’re living in an anti-scientific fantasy.
Unless you have a more likely culprit for mass deforestation and encroachment of wild habitats.
“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”..
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933223-300-rescue-plan-for-nature-how-to-fix-the-biodiversity-crisis/
‘Because of our broken relationship with nature, these events are already happening more frequently: more than 335 emerging infectious disease outbreaks were reported worldwide from 1940 to 2004 – over 50 per decade.
The next novel virus that we encounter could be both highly transmissible and highly virulent – leading to an immediate existential threat for much of humanity (Jones et al, 2008).’
https://www.preventingfuturepandemics.org/the-problem
‘Dr Peter Daszak and Dr William Karesh from EcoHealth Alliance highlight how climate change and pandemic risk are interconnected; all the solutions already identified to tackle global warming will also help prevent the next virus from jumping.’
<a href=“https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000symp
‘Three quarters of the emerging pathogens that infect humans leaped from animals, many of them creatures in the forest habitats that we are slashing and burning to create land for crops, including biofuel plants, and for mining and housing. The more we clear, the more we come into contact with wildlife that carries microbes well suited to kill us—and the more we concentrate those animals in smaller areas where they can swap infectious microbes, raising the chances of novel strains. 
…In addition, we have to examine factory farms that pack thousands of animals together—the source of the 2009 swine flu outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people in the U.S. and multitudes worldwide.’
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stopping-deforestation-can-prevent-pandemics1/
I could go on posting hard, peer-reviewed evidence all day.
What have you got?
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 11:53
In response to CaptainRogers
Let’s hope that the fact that Climate Change and Pandemics are the twin effects of the same consumerism, is not denied any longer.
Covid could have been the most powerful weapon in convincing more people that radical economic reform is vital for a sustainable future.
But the warnings are still being ignored in the face of overwhelming evidence, including dozens of novel viruses in the last few decades caused by many of the same Consumerist abuses which exacerbate climate change.
“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”..
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933223-300-rescue-plan-for-nature-how-to-fix-the-biodiversity-crisis/
View discussion

We’ve had information campaigns on Brexit and Covid. What about the climate?
4 May 2021 11:42
Pandemics and Climate change are the same campaign.
Both caused by the same toxic consumerism. The science is as unanimous about the causes of zootic pathogens as it is about the causes of anthropogenic climate change. You can’t accept one without the other.
For over a year, this has been a golden propaganda opportunity for all environmentalists. One which has been squandered by the most unlikely suspects, including Greenpeace, FOE, and David Attenborough himself.
A concrete deadly example of the consequences of our actions lands on our doorstep and we ignore it. Preferring instead to fight a futile vaccine war against an ever changing enemy and yearn for a return to the ‘normal’ which has already dug at least 3.5 million graves worldwide. And which will inevitably deliver another novel virus in due course. Another one we do not have a vaccine for.
The cost of Covid may well prove to be much higher than we can count.
“There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic – us. As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. “
https://ipbes.net/covid19stimulus
View discussion

30/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @TomWilliams88 and @BBCNews
I know. I chose to reply to you because you seem a rational person. Not one of the lynch-mob who doth protest too much. Most violence is psychopathic, and deserves an indefinite term in a nuthouse. Crazy until proven sane.
5:31 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @WhittyPics and @guardian
We all sympathise with your Identity Crisis caused by the irrefutable science, but sometimes we have to be Brave Little Soldiers and face the facts.
You will have to do Cold Turkey sooner or later to get you off your Consumerist Junkie addiction.
5:28 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @guardian
To avert catastrophe in the form of irreversible climate Change and regular Pandemics, we have to return to much more sustainable levels of personal consumption – and fast. The Consumerist Orgy is over.
5:25 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @ThePrizeForce and @guardian
What rock have you been hiding under? Yemen, India, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine.. Wars because of drought and water rights are rampant NOW. A drought in the Ukraine caused the shortage of grain in Syria, and BOOM!
Editor’s Pick: 10 Violent Water Conflicts – WorldEnglish News and Press Release on World and 15 other countries about Water Sanitation Hygiene and Drought; published on 21 Aug 2017 by adelphireliefweb.int
5:23 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @yellow69salmon@BBCNews and @bbclaurak
Any hostile agency could hack it – a national security risk. Who knows what his bungling has cost? “For a key public figure, being openly contactable is highly undesirable,” said Tom Davison, technical director at the cybersecurity firm Lookout”
Did Boris Johnson’s easily available phone number pose security risk?Analysis: texts are a popular route by which hackers can launch malware attacks to bypass corporate – or state – security teams, say experts
theguardian.com
5:09 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @SquareAlbert@pistolpete168 and @BBCNews
Because it doesn’t spend every minute kissing Johnson’s arse. Haven’t you learned the rule yet?
Anyone who criticises Johnson is a Traitor. An Enemy of the State.
5:00 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @DavidAldworth and @michaelwhite
Except when the British government chooses to break it. And employ protestant terrorists responsible for 60% of the deaths in the Troubles.
‘Nelson files’ link British authorities to UDA death squadsShock revelations about British army collusion with loyalist paramilitary death squads are set to rock the political institutions in Dublin and London.independent.ie
4:30 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BillEllson@GrahamEvans2and 4 others
Which NHS did the tories agree to? The one they voted against 22 times? The one that made it possible? Or merely a revamped version of the old decentralised ragbag of charities and foundations?
The Tories’ War on the NHSThe Tories have despised the public ethos of the NHS since it was founded. In power, they have privatised its services any chance they could – often making handsome profits in the process.tribunemag.co.uk
4:14 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @michaelwhite
When will it sink in the economists’ thick skulls that a return to ‘normal’ capitalism is a guarantee of more global Pandemics? “pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – our global economic systems, that prizes economic growth at any cost.
“IPBES Guest Article: COVID-19 Stimulus Measures Must Save Lives, Protect Livelihoods, and Safeguard…IPBES Expert Guest Article by Professors Josef Settele, Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondizioipbes.net
11:42 AM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @ThePrizeForce and @guardian
That’s all you know. Without the mass unemployment and gross food inflation caused by years of drought, there would have been no Arab Spring. Try reading the specialist research instead of jumping to urban myth conclusions.
5:44 PM · Apr 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

29/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrdailydigger and @michaelwhite
You have to think of this electorate as a Junkie with another decade of addiction to Consumerist Junk in its veins. Going Cold Turkey and voting for a radical solution to global threats like Climate Disaster and Pandemics is like grassing up its dealer.
8:15 PM · Apr 29, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCNews
And back to destroying the environment by spewing out more CO2 & Methane, and spawning more zootic pathogens from the habitats its burgers eradicate.
Every burger you eat brings the next Pandemic nearer.
Addressing climate change in a post-pandemic worldThe ongoing crisis holds profound lessons that can help us address climate change post-coronavirus—if we make greater economic and environmental plans for the recovery ahead.mckinsey.com
8:09 PM · Apr 29, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @wvbh3@MarkSeddon1962 and @michaelwhite
Churchill was being roundly booed by the women of the EastEnd during the Blitz, & he was always hated by the Welsh working classes.
Atlee could claim 4 years of National Government. Starmer is a novice, like Johnson – but not stupid & corrupt. The nation’s choice will define it.
7:29 PM · Apr 29, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @oscarhero1801
Because of Brexit Brainwashing. The tribe dare not abandon its God-chief as that would destroy its Identity. Same reason they don’t accept the causes of Global Warming. (end of consumerist junkie orgy)
7:20 PM · Apr 29, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Bluechester3@roarbro and @Kevin_Maguire
Every ‘donation’ is a favour in waiting – at the taxpayer’s expense. (No such thing as a free makeover).
This is one of a long line of corrupt backhanders to cowboy carpetbaggers who have cashed in on Covid, and the suffering of the British people.
In WW2 they would be in jail.
7:16 PM · Apr 29, 2021·Twitter Web App

28/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Bluechester3@roarbro and @Kevin_Maguire
All the more reason to screw the Markets and release the formula for all to make.
You want to turn a lifesaving drug into a political tool.
Nice. But typical.
10:18 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Nice try. I’ve just outlined 1 of my beefs with JC. His pacifism is another Back to your baseless claims that (somehow) Johnson is a better PM than the untested JC.
How has Johnson passed your Competency Test?
Name 1 issue that he (not the NHS or scientists) handled competently.
8:55 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
JC committed many tactical errors. The worst being his refusal to form a pan-European Progressive Alliance. But if you can find corruption, good luck. Johnson has proved himself both corrupt AND totally incompetent. Both at Brexit & Covid. Covid would have suited JC’s instincts.
8:47 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @michaelwhite
When did Johnson raise a finger against the Saudi dictatorship & its proven crimes against immigrant workers? Compared with JC’s old fashioned ‘gullible’ creed of innocence until proven guilty, I know who would have made the best PM. Who would have COMPETENTLY declared donations
8:20 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Chaosdruid@LevyLoiseau and @PeterDaszak
Most zootic pathogen Pandemics are generated by consumerist deforestation, land abuse and intensive farming. And have arisen across the world (H.I.H., Nile Virus, M.E.R.S. Zica, etc etc.)
Every burger we eat brings the next unknown Pandemic nearer.
https://oie.int/doc/ged/D14089.PDF…
8:04 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @owlsfan83@Cheetahplains and @BBCBreaking
It’s called Covid gangsterism. And will lead to mass reinfection as new strains spread from petri dishes like India and Brazil.
7:58 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Much better a ‘gullible’ PM than a conniving bastard who refused to implement community measures which would have saved tens of 1000’s of lives. Mobilising mass-testing would have been just up JC’s street. Still waiting for your list of JC billionaire backers.
4:23 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
What evidence do you have for that absurd claim, apart from your own prejudice? Is this about ‘Platform-Sharing’ again? Which shares the same rules as an Oxbridge debating society. If not, please show evidence, of which there is as little as there is for claims of ‘racist’ Labour
4:18 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Are you seriously suggesting that the Salisbury poisoners were in the pocket of the Labour Party? Is that the best you can do to ‘know’ that JC would have been in any sense ‘worse’ than Johnson? Now I’ve seen it all.
4:05 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BrianTettie and @AlanBarrierEA
Thanks to the GLC, to be accurate. The same GLC abolished by Thatcher after making the LDDC possible, and all the vulture capitalism it fostered. No barrier – no Canary Wharf.
4:03 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Name some of Corbyn’s sleazy billionaire pals who would have been bunged if he’s gained power.
3:58 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @michaelwhite
You ‘know’ no such thing. So stop peddling lies. You have your prejudices, which by definition are inadmissable in any court of opinion.
In what sense was JC a ‘rogue’? Evidence please, not scurrilous hearsay.
3:57 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michael_wheller and @BBCNews
Where is English being eradicated?
Welsh should be compulsory in English schools to try and recue England from total cultural decay.
After a 1000 years of immediate proximity, you still cannot or will not learn basic pronunciation. I.E. you have no culture.
The height of arrogance
3:54 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Bluechester3 and @Kevin_Maguire
I care if our PM is a crook and a liar who fills the pockets of his cronies at the taxpayer’s expense.
Only crawling lickspittles who have hitched their souls to his version of Brexit would ignore his crimes. ‘He IS the Messiah BECAUSE he’s a Very naughty Boy’.
3:50 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michael_wheller and @BBCNews
You mean Cultural Cleansing Balkan style. Eradication of anything you don’t understand or find inconvenient.
Regional dialect and accents will be next.
The English clearly need Welsh lessons in school to educate them about their heritage.
You have no heritage or culture.
3:32 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @CallumT4ylor and @BBCNews
No wonder after centuries of cultural vandalism by English overlords.
Time to start teaching Welsh in English schools. At least it would stop English tourists from sounding like idiots when botching basic pronunciations. And be as much use as all the forgotten French verbs.
3:27 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCSport and @BBCSportWales
Only one strategy will abolish online racist abuse. A dedicated group of vigilantes determined to REPORT – BLOCK and REPEAT.
It’s up to us, not global corporations.
Getting barred from Twitter is as easy as using the term ‘Redneck’. So eradicating racism should be a piece of cake.
3:21 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @RJCBennett@nickeardleybbc and @bbclaurak
How many have killed over 100,000 citizens through criminal negligence and corruption?
A higher figure per capita than India.
12:41 PM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MadMark56@nickeardleybbc and @bbclaurak
If you’re not ‘worked up’ by corruption worthy of a Banana Republic, go live in one.
Your taxes will ultimately pay for the backhander privileges dished out by this bunch of crooks.
If the Dyson deal had worked, you would be subsidising his tax-dodging sweatshop .
11:50 AM · Apr 28, 2021·Twitter Web App

UK Covid: 60m vaccine booster shots secured for use later this year – as it happened
28 Apr 2021 16:36
What exactly is the Orange Order’s big problem with bowls of scented flowers and herbs anyway?
‘NO POT-POURRI!’
‘NO POT-POURRI!’
View discussion

The ‘John Lewis nightmare’ shows just how out of touch Boris Johnson is
28 Apr 2021 16:10
In response to Katylies
Every dictator in history has claimed to Make the Trains Run On Time (or chariots).
And to have been dedicated to the defeat of a Common Enemy.
View discussion

UK Covid: 60m vaccine booster shots secured for use later this year – as it happened
28 Apr 2021 15:43
Now it’s official – and personal.
‘I’m guilty if I say I am.’
Goodbye democracy, hello Banana Dictatorship.
View discussion

In the court of King Boris, only one thing is certain: this will all end badly
28 Apr 2021 12:18
The 52% will never convict, no matter how much Johnson’s guilt stinks. Their noses were amputated in 2016.
He is The Messiah because he’s a Very Naughty Boy.
Meanwhile his lickspittle MP’s keep justifying tax-dodgers, and his top civil servant stonewalls like a mobster at the Kefauver Hearings.
This country is now a Banana Republic with no moral authority on the world stage.
View discussion

In the court of King Boris, only one thing is certain: this will all end badly
28 Apr 2021 11:31
In response to Quixotematic
She’s his Beyoncee.
Obviously.
View discussion

In the court of King Boris, only one thing is certain: this will all end badly
28 Apr 2021 11:28
In response to tonystoke
Because it’s the NEWS.
It’s not the BBC’s job to sanitise it to suit your tastes.
Anyone with a mind to make up will draw their own conclusions after listening to the opposite viewpoints..
View discussion

(ERASED FROM GUARDIAN In the court of King Boris, only one thing is certain: this will all end badly
The 52% will never convict, no matter how much Johnson’s guilt stinks. Their noses were amputated in 2016.
He could commit mass-murder and call it a benign tax-break. which in a sense he has. The more ‘bodies pile up’, the lower the state subsidies to the living, meaning lower taxes in the future.
He is The Messiah because he’s a Very Naughty Boy.
Meanwhile his lickspittle MP’s keep lying through their teeth, and his top civil servant stonewalls like a mobster at the Kefauver Hearings.
This country is now a nursery full of babbling spoilt brats.

27/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @HeyAlpesh and @BBCNews
‘It takes a village to raise a child’.
But the deliberate aim of tory policy is to destroy working communities. Hermetically sealed debt-slaves are far more profitable, servile and domesticated.
7:56 PM · Apr 27, 2021·Twitter Web App


Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @HeyAlpesh and @BBCNews
Since you raise it, the social damage done by the eradication of Youth services, and handing innocent kids over and their precious childhoods to brain-damaged boxing coaches, is incalculable.
We are a nation of paedophobes.
7:10 PM · Apr 27, 2021·Twitter Web App

26/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Sarah97827106 and @Peston
All of which makes his appointment by Johnson all the more damning.
Nobody thought Cummings wasn’t an effective advisor. Just EVIL.
That doesn’t discredit his account of events.
3:37 PM · Apr 26, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Mugwump73021256@CarolineLucas and @BBC
When did the BBC ‘decide’ anything? If you think that the majority of people care about Tory sleaze you’re deluded. Most Consumer Junkies just care about their next fix. And Johnson is their dealer. Their Mother Superior.
12:34 PM · Apr 26, 2021·Twitter Web App

22/04/2021

A lot of people pitched in during Covid, but only Dyson got a tax waiver for it
22 Apr 2021 16:51 In response to MaxwellKlinger
The NHS was short of equipment because of 10 years of tory underfunding and its dismantling of the warning mechanisms of pandemics to come.
Why was Dyson’s tax-dodging, sweatshop-wages Heath-Robinson outfit eligible for outrageous tax-breaks while every other contractor had to obey the rules?View discussion

The European Super League is the perfect metaphor for global capitalism
22 Apr 2021 11:49
The banks are to blame for both.
JP Morgan funded the Stupor League. And like all banks write the rulebook to suit themselves (Like the ESL) and destroy the environment (Like the SL would have destroyed football.)
No environment – no civilisation. No civilisation – no football.
View discussion

20/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @guardian
EVERY rational person is hoping for a guilty verdict, and fast. Chauvin’s ‘Alt-Truth Defence’ was a disgrace to the legal profession, but a tribute to Trumpist insanity.
4:11 PM · Apr 20, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @guardian
Chauvin’s scum-lawyer used what can only be described as the ‘Alt-Truth Defence’. If Trumpism has infected just one juror there will be an acquittal, of sorts.
America’s terminal sickness will be exposed and it will erupt in chaos.
11:40 AM · Apr 20, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @guardian
Every pre-apocalyptic era produces a flight to rampant superstition. (C11th/C15th). The difference is that now we know it’s real. The counter effect is a flowering of rationality. (The humanist Renaissance & the Copernican scientific revolution.) Our only hope rests in the latter
11:27 AM · Apr 20, 2021·Twitter Web App

Ignore the rhetoric: the UK government still fails to grasp the climate crisis
20 Apr 2021 10:52
In response to just_browsing
Get out more.
You want ‘positive suggestions’?
Start with the Green New Deal and back up your new understanding with the scientific consensus, which represent a death-sentence for Consumerism.
The solution is a return to sustainable levels of consumption, enabled by global cooperation.
View discussion

Ignore the rhetoric: the UK government still fails to grasp the climate crisis20 Apr 2021 10:43
“the UK government still fails to grasp the climate crisis”
Just as it fails to grasp that global warming and Pandemic zootic pathogens are caused by the same environmental devastation required by Consumerism.
Until they have their road to Damascus moment, and put planet and people before profit, they will be incapable of taking any meaningful action.
“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”..
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933223-300-rescue-plan-for-nature-how-to-fix-the-biodiversity-crisis/
View discussion

19/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @NickBoles
Why? Because of the certainty anthropogenic climate disaster of course. The choice is either acceptance of the science and the related actions needed; or neurotic denial and the flight to superstition, ‘alt-truth’ and lynch-mobs chasing teenage girls who know the truth.
4:09 PM · Apr 19, 2021·Twitter Web App


Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @WhereIsYanLing@noname_h2020 and @DeborahMeaden
Who says it ‘started in a city’? Apart from you.
Humans may have CAUGHT it in a city. But animal diseases originate and are multiplied by ‘the mode and the intensity of land use .. creating expanding hazardous interfaces’ ( Nature) As always.
Preventing the next pandemic: Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmissionStatement by Inger Andersen, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programmeunep.org
4:05 PM · Apr 19, 2021·Twitter Web App

18/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCNews
As the Queen Mother said: “Now we can look the East-End in the face”
10:12 AM · Apr 18, 2021·Twitter Web App

14/04/2021

Apparently just by talking about it, I’m super-spreading long Covid
14 Apr 2021 13:24
The myth of ‘Man-Flu’ almost killed me.
My agonising symptoms were baffling the virologists trying to diagnose me in hospital, and one of them eventually tried to send me home ‘where I would be more comfortable’.
It wasn’t until a passing Neurologist got suspicious that I was diagnosed and treated effectively for Guillain-Barré Syndrome – a very nasty half-sister of Multiple Sclerosis, and not unlike the reported symptoms of Long-Covid.
I could have suffered long term damage or worse because of a toxic word which essentially branded me as a hypochondriac.
View discussion

13/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @DPJHodges and @brianmoore666
Dream on. “The world is facing 3 major crises: loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”.
Rescue plan for nature: How to fix the biodiversity crisis | New Scientist
We’ve been ravaging the planet’s ecosystems for too long, but crucial decisions this year could be the turning point that help us restore our relationship with naturenewscientist.com
7:32 PM · Apr 13, 2021·
Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @DPJHodges and @brianmoore666
This is only the beginning of the end for the 1st strain of Covid19. There are plenty more waiting to kill more people. And even if we do invent enough vaccines for this virus, there are plenty more waiting to be unleashed by rapacious consumerism and its destruction of habitats.
7:30 PM · Apr 13, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @PeterDaszak
The Denialism will only get worse as the effects of eco-cidal consumerism become more starkly obvious.
Denial is the classic 1st response to the diagnosis of a terminal disease. Pre-apocalyptic eras generally trigger a flight to superstition – only this time it’s real.
12:14 PM · Apr 13, 2021·Twitter Web App

12/04/201

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MichaelRosenYes and @ZTPetrizzo
Was he banned because enough users REPORTED his breaches? If enough right-minded law-abiding users ganged up on the thugs, SM hosts would have no choice. ~
God knows, it’s easy enough to get suspended from Twitter for incidentally offending some sad weirdo or other.
10:23 PM · Apr 12, 2021·Twitter Web App


Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @thedude16347680@ArmyVet831 and @mayor_elliott
I’m not ignorant of your braindead meaninglessness. Or of the level of U.S. racist brutality and Klan infiltration. A sick culture which needs radical intervention if the society is to survive. [Cue your next baby pictogram]
White Supremacist Infiltration of Police Forces: Fact-Checking National Security Advisor O’BrienWhat the available research says about systemic discrimination in law enforcement as well as links to racist and white supremacist ideology.justsecurity.org
7:45 PM · Apr 12, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCSportWales and @BBCScrumV
@gregortownsend ‘players are now a different shape to their 19th century predecessors. Let’s insist on minimum pitch dimensions at the professional level to stop the rugby stranglers & do away with the maximum or at least increase the width of the pitch.’
https://therugbysite.com/blog/news-opinions/pitch-size-matters…
3:57 PM · Apr 12, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Deplora32055952 and @mayor_elliott
‘Hit’ who? People with air-fresheners in their rear windows?
This is a capital offence now in Minnesota?
The USA is entering a barbaric new Dark Age.
3:48 PM · Apr 12, 2021·Twitter Web App

10/04/2021

Are Covid passports a threat to liberty? It depends on how you define freedom
10 Apr 2021 12:03
Baroness Chakrabarti, CBE, PC delivered a typically pathetic case against Covid Passports on Today when she agonised over the plight of nightclub bouncers forced to refuse admission to the inadmissable.
I don’t know when she last went to a nightclub, if ever, but if she had done she would have found that a bouncer’s job is often to refuse admission to anyone not wearing the right shoes – to preserve the ‘image’ of the establishment. A degrading task serving the interest of style over culture. How much more fulfilling for them to serve the interest of safety over indefensible, dangerous Ivory Tower principles.
View discussion

May I have a word about… the abominable lexicon of lockdown
5 Apr 2021 16:37
In response to alexito
Totes emoshe!
Newspeak and gargoyles are perf for keeping you in order.
But not for communicating thoughts.
Thoughts and words are indivisible, and the more words the better.
View discussion

May I have a word about… the abominable lexicon of lockdown
5 Apr 2021 16:22
In response to Firstpoet
The important thing is to have as many synonyms as possible to cover the widest range of meanings. English probably has the most.
Naturally enough, modern Digi-speak tends work on the binary principle of Orwell’s newspeak. And as it does so makes many meanings impossible.
View discussion

May I have a word about… the abominable lexicon of lockdown
5 Apr 2021 16:18
In response to alexito
Orwell’s Newspeak is gathering speed with every Zigabyte of memory added to the global consumer telescreen.
With the widespread regression to stone age pictograms, the process of divorcing thought from language is almost complete in some people. The very word ’emoji’ is a regression to babytalk.
View discussion

04/04/2021

May I have a word about… the abominable lexicon of lockdown
4 Apr 2021 14:19
In response to LorLala
How is language ‘fluid and ever developing’?
The overwhelming tendency is for words and their nuances to be either eradicated and squashed into all-purpose evasions of thought and meaning such as ‘troll’, or rebranded to sound clever and trendy, such as ‘woke’. Both toxic to discriminatory thought and both evidence of creeping Orwellian Newspeak.
View discussion

May I have a word about… the abominable lexicon of lockdown
4 Apr 2021 13:44
‘My new pet hate is ‘being remoted into’
Pure office gobbledegook, one of many long-standing bureaucratic abominations, and predictable when homes become offices. And no worse than the internet cascade of unintelligible Nu-Jargon such as ‘meme’, ‘trope’, ‘troll’, ‘woke’ and the rest.
The campaign for Plain English is dead, and Orwell is turning in his grave.
His window pane is now a brick wall.
‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.’
View discussion

01/04/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
So you believe in Science when it saves your miserable skin and prolongs the death-agony of Consumerism for a while.
But not when science demonstrates that Consumerism is to blame for the pox that science is protecting you from.
100% psycho and hypocrite.
8:51 PM · Apr 1, 2021·Twitter Web App

The Tories’ decade in power is remarkable for the hollowness of their vision
1 Apr 2021 14:55
It is hardly surprising that British turkeys voted for Xmas when there are so many in deep denial of the overwhelming scientific evidence that Consumerism is about to destroy civilisation.
The problem is their psychological dependence on a sense of identity based entirely on the Profit Motive and the myth of the capitalist Perpetual Motion machine, and the ecological devastation involved in perpetuating that myth.
The rational alternative of voting for a party of political and economic cooperation is far too scary. The equivalent of a Junkie grassing up his dealer.
View discussion

31/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Too afraid to read the science again? Here’s more terror to hide from.
Refute and grow up for once.
‘ fruit nibbled by the bats fell into the pigs’ pens, which created the perfect opportunity for a bat virus to pass on to pigs and, later, people’.
‘Nipah: The Very Model of a Pandemic – EcoHealth AllianceNipah virus is a highly lethal emerging disease which can lead to brain swelling and coma. Its spread from wildlife to humans presents proof of concept for EcoHealth Alliance’s One Health mentality.ecohealthalliance.org
6:46 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Stop whining and address the science. Read and refute.
‘Because of our broken relationship with nature, these events are already happening more frequently: more than 335 emerging infectious disease outbreaks were reported worldwide from 1940 to 2004.’
’THE PROBLEM | Preventing Pandemicspreventingfuturepandemics.org
4:16 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
According to you I can’t read a book because paper is made of wood. And Mein Kampf is written on it.
The internet was invented to share scientific information. Your Consumerism bastardised it to make war and money. Abuses of technology don’t disqualify its use by anyone. .
4:13 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Living as green a life as possible – as Consumerism will allow.
When it has destroyed itself, everyone will discover a new freedom.
Especially from perverts like you.
1:05 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Chips made in California. Not that it makes a difference.
I have to eat too. And putting food on shelves emits CO2. Therefore I’m disqualified from opposing the fossil fuel industry.
You would rather destroy civilisation than be denied your dose of burgers.
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly FutureWe report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be…frontiersin.org
1:03 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
ACTION is driven by KNOWLEDGE. Those with the guts to read the science will pressurise governments and corporations to change their ways or get out of the way. You have neither guts nor brains.
The COVID-19 pandemic and global environmental change: Emerging research needsThe outbreak of COVID-19 raised numerous questions on the interactions between the occurrence of new infections, the environment, climate and health. …sciencedirect.com
12:55 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
So you’re saying that nobody with a full stomach can argue against poverty. Nobody who can read can argue against illiteracy.
In other words, you would destroy all progress. A good thing that History proves you a hypocritical ignoramus.
12:52 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
According to you no action is possible. That Consumerism is inescapable. It is if you want it to be, and blind yourself to Reality. You want it to be. THAT’S ‘Hypocrisy’.
If everyone was as aware as you want to be ignorant, there would be no problem.
12:49 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
30% of container miles wasted is another blatantly obvious symptom of Consumerist destruction. Everything else clearly follows to those with minds.
The reality is that your feeble attempts at evading the truth are not only cowardly but wrong. My PC was built in Britain 10 years ago
12:47 PM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @guardianBy banning sexist, mind-perverting crap like this on our streets and media – for a start.
Never happen of course. Sex sells.
‘XMAS KISSES GUARANTEED!’Sexist poster Old Kent Road.flickr.com
11:51 AM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @TheCut
The police also exonerated POLICE MEDIC YR394 for hitting unseen protestors.
And the officers that killed Ian Tomlinson. G20 2009.
POLICE MEDIC YR394Explore BIGINABOX’s 2684 photos on Flickr!flickr.com
11:48 AM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @newscientist
Most of it in Brazil. Expect the next Pandemic to be spawned in the Amazon.
‘ecologist David Lapola warns that the next pandemic could come from the Amazon rainforest .. human encroachment on habitats is soaring there because of rampant deforestation.’
The Economy, Climate Change and Infectious Diseases: Links and Policy ImplicationsThis short paper provides a modeling framework for unifying the economy, climate change and the outbreak of infectious diseases such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. We stress that continuous growth…link.springer.com
11:35 AM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrlatus@TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Of course you’re embarrassed by reality. It destroys your pathetic Consumerist identity.
More science to embarrass you below. Naturally you won’t read it because it hurts.
Keep banging the bucket on your head and substituting emojis for thought.
The COVID-19 pandemic and global environmental change: Emerging research needs
The outbreak of COVID-19 raised numerous questions on the interactions between the occurrence of new infections, the environment, climate and health. …sciencedirect.com
11:30 AM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Destruction of world’s forests increased sharply in 2020. Primary forest loss in Brazil increased by 25% to 1.7m hectares last year.
Expect the next Pandemic to start in Brazil.
Destruction of world’s forests increased sharply in 2020Calls for forests to be high on Cop26 agenda after loss of 42,000 sq km of tree cover in key tropical regionstheguardian.com11:25 AM · Mar 31, 2021·Twitter Web App

30/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @BBCNews
The policy all along was ‘Herd-Immunity’ by the backdoor. Ban community testing, make pals rich bodging fake phone-test gimmicks, let the virus run riot until a vaccine rides to the rescue – and corner the market in it.
This plan only cost 200,000 lives. A BARGAIN!
12:22 PM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Your toxic consumerism is cornered by facts and cowering in a corner. Meaning your entire Junkie Identity is fatally threatened. That makes you very, very afraid. And so you have to deny all science. Branding it all a sinister Red Plot. Old story. The backbone of barbarism.
11:25 AM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Which science do you refute?
‘Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems. global changes in the intensity of land use are creating hazardous interfaces between people, livestock & wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.’
Preventing the next pandemic: Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission
Statement by Inger Andersen, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programmeunep.org
11:21 AM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
You are in total denial of the science. Or you wouldn’t be making your infantile noises.
‘ these emerging diseases & practically all pandemics ..are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” between wildlife, livestock, & people.‘
A Pandemic EraA little over a year ago the word pandemic was, for most people, associated with disaster movies and history books. Despite repeated warnings about the very real risk of occurrence from infectious…thelancet.com
11:16 AM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
‘Everything’, in the shape of your Consumer God, is to blame for both Pandemics and Global Warming. Read the science or go back to your stone-age Cult.
“As more forest is cleared, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge“
Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humansAs more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.nationalgeographic.com
11:12 AM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Nice lies, but the fact is that you are left terrified and in denial of science.
You deny Climate change is caused by Consumerism. Right?
You’re left clinging desperately to your indoctrination.
10:37 AM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
Blah blah. Read the science & grow up.
According to you nobody is ever qualified to judge the status quo they are trapped in – goodbye to progress. Nobody with a full belly is qualified to criticise poverty. Nobody silenced by a dictatorship is qualified to speak against it.
10:35 AM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @TinkTonk88 and @michaelwhite
And in fact, your assumption is wrong. My PC was custom-built by a British technician. It’s 10 years old.
How many cars & Burgers have you inflicted on the planet in that time?
10:27 AM · Mar 30, 2021·Twitter Web App

29/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
The Suez farce has thrown up another Consumerist obscenity. A third of containers in transit are empty, and a complete waste of energy.
https://transmetrics.ai/blog/empty-container-repositioning/#:~:text=Every%201%20in%203%20containers,still%20suffers%20from%20huge%20inefficiencies….Solving Empty Container Repositioning Problem with AI – Transmetrics
The problem of empty container repositioning, and how container shipping companies can solve this problem with the help of digital technologies.transmetrics.ai
7:36 PM · Mar 29, 2021·Twitter Web App

27/03/2021

Capitalism won’t save us from Covid, no matter what Boris Johnson might think27 Mar 2021 15:57
In response to Chriswr
‘Humans have been in close contact with livestock animals since the neolithic revolution…’
Not this close. And we have never been this destructive of the environment and productive of lethal pathogens. Comparing modern capitalism with the stone age is like comparing modern industrial technology with – the stone age. There is no comparison.
Competitive industrial capitalism is using the same methods to spawn Pandemics that it uses to poison the atmosphere and the oceans. There is no alternative culprit.
The only solution is to go cold turkey on Consumerist Junk, which we’ve done without for most of our history on this planet. And accept that competition as a means of progress is now as obsolete as Stonehenge. Covid is providing a timely rehearsal in the cooperative skills we will need to sustain civilisation.
View discussion

Capitalism won’t save us from Covid, no matter what Boris Johnson might think
27 Mar 2021 14:39
In response to Chriswr
Covid 19 is the latest of a long list of zootic pathogens to be created by capitalism, and its project do destroy Earth’s ecosystem, forcing disease-bearing wild animals into unprecedented close contact with Humans and their domestic livestock – which act as Amplifier Vectors for disease.
Most of these originated outside China (e.g. Ebola, Middle-Eastern Respiratory Disease, Swine Flu..). There is even evidence that the first Covid cases were in Italy, not China.
We have declared war against Nature, and are now forced to depend on the Pharma-Giants for an annual lifesaver to keep Consumerism on life-support.
When the next Disease X turns up, maybe we will realise what our ‘Normal’ means to the survival of civilisation.
View discussion

Capitalism won’t save us from Covid, no matter what Boris Johnson might think
27 Mar 2021 14:28
‘Capitalism won’t save us from Covid‘
How can it? It caused it.
And when the next ‘Disease X’ arrives and becomes endemic alongside the widening Coronavirus Spectrum, capitalism will be even more in hoc to the Pharma-Giants to keep the treadmills turning, destroying more habitat to produce more Junk-Profit, and spewing out more zootoc pathogens to add to the scores created in the last few decades.
A Vaccine War we can never win.
The scientific consensus is overwhelming.
I can’t be bothered to post the links anymore.
View discussion

24/03/2021

Covid won’t be the last pandemic. Will we be better prepared for the next one?
24 Mar 2021 16:20
In response to Pol1ticalAn1mal

Who told you that?~
The Daily Mail?
HIV, MERS, Swine fever, Ebola… etc etc. Most of the many pathogens of the last 20 years are nothing to do with China. All caused by destructive agriculture, deforestation, factory farming, and all the other glories of toxic consumerism.
Climate change is also adding to the problem by adding to the deforestation and habitat loss.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933223-300-rescue-plan-for-nature-how-to-fix-the-biodiversity-crisis/
View discussion

Covid won’t be the last pandemic. Will we be better prepared for the next one?
24 Mar 2021 16:14
In response to Hak_a_dalan
“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”.
New Scientist
View discussion

Covid won’t be the last pandemic. Will we be better prepared for the next one?
24 Mar 2021 16:09
In response to ServiusGalba
Tackling the CAUSE is the only ‘key’.
If we mean business on Global Warming, this should be a piece of cake, since the same consumerist ecocide is at work. Big If.
But how will we do without our yummy scrummy burgers?
Will nobody think of the obese children!?
View discussion

Covid won’t be the last pandemic. Will we be better prepared for the next one?
24 Mar 2021 16:05
In response to Kay365
Does ‘liberal’ include the Liberty to poison the planet and destroy civilisation?
‘Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including influenza, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people. Combined with highly interconnected globalised economies and rapid transport, this makes pandemics a rapidly growing risk.’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30305-3/fulltext
View discussion

Covid won’t be the last pandemic. Will we be better prepared for the next one?
24 Mar 2021 16:03
In response to Hibernica
‘Science has excelled itself.‘
And Johnson’s greedy capitalism has disgraced itself.
The scientific consensus is that capitalism is as much to blame for Zootic Pathogens and successive Pandemics as it is for Global Warming.
There is no end to its talents.
View discussion

Covid won’t be the last pandemic. Will we be better prepared for the next one?
24 Mar 2021 15:31
In response to SeanDH
‘respiratory infections cannot be managed.’
When did you have a sniffle last?
I don’t know anyone who’s caught a cold or flu since 2019.
We’ve successfully ‘managed’ those viruses away by simple barrier methods.
View discussion

Covid won’t be the last pandemic. Will we be better prepared for the next one?
24 Mar 2021 15:28
‘scientists are clear that we will face another pandemic in the future. Most agree the question is when, not if.’
They also agree on How we are spawning increasing numbers of zootic pathogens – by the same methods we are using to poison the atmosphere.
We are as much to blame for the Pandemic Era as we are for Global Warming, which places the blame squarely in the lap of ecocidal Consumerism and its toxic Junk Economy.
Fortunately, both catastrophes have the same counter-measures. Unfortunately, they are too radical for apologists of Consumerism to accept, however overwhelming the scientific consensus.
“As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans/
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @itssarahmjones@kazzacraig0403and 2 others
Starmer has regularly, unfailingly told Johnson what to do 2 weeks before it finally happened – too late.
He has urged Community Testing from day1. Which NEVER happened.
‘Mr 20/20 Hindsight’ was in fact merely using 2+2=4 FORESIGHT.
The kind which keeps every household budget balanced
3:41 PM · Mar 24, 2021·Twitter Web App

22/03/2021

. There have been many failures over Covid. We cannot afford to forget them
22 Mar 2021 16:40
In response to FrogmellaFarage
It was ‘normal’ Consumerism which bred this pox in the first place.
After Mers, Ebola, SARs1 and a dozen other escaped pathogens, scientists are now calling this the Pathogen Era. All with the same causes as Global warming.
Returning to ‘normal’ is a suicide note.
View discussion

There have been many failures over Covid. We cannot afford to forget them
22 Mar 2021 16:3
”This won’t be the last pandemic”
Every burger we eat brings the next plague that much nearer. And adds that much more Co2 to the atmosphere.
Deforestation and Consumerism are spawning zootic pathogens and poisoning the atmosphere. And the same strategies have to be used to combat both.
‘“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”.
New Scientist
View discussion

20/03/2021

Unheralded Wayne Pivac leads Wales to threshold of unlikely grand slam
20 Mar 2021 10:42
This isn’t just yet another routine Grand Slam decider for Wales.
The future of rugby is at stake.
If Pivac fails, then rugby, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted sports science.
View discussion

19/03/2021

The planet cannot survive our remorseless pursuit of profit
19 Mar 2021 17:32
In response to Owetoyn
Civilisations are not lumps of rock. They are living things which must be sustained by those living within them and benefiting from them.
Do you like living in a civilisation or not?
Make your mind up soon.
View discussion

The planet cannot survive our remorseless pursuit of profit
19 Mar 2021 17:29
There is more than enough evidence to convict capitalism of Climate Change and zootic Pandemics. Many of the same industrial processes cause both.
This is a propaganda open-goal which must be scored if the future of civilisation is to be ensured in any way.
Dr Peter Daszak and Dr William Karesh from EcoHealth Alliance highlight how climate change and pandemic risk are interconnected; all the solutions already identified to tackle global warming will also help prevent the next virus from jumping.’
View discussion

The planet cannot survive our remorseless pursuit of profit
19 Mar 2021 17:16 In response to brotherJAK
It’s not our job to lay out a detailed bluprint or map. Utopias are an empty promise. The end is not uniform luxury but universal respect. The people of Myanmar aren’t risking their lives for better cars and dishwashers.
All we can do is assert the basic principles of fellowship a future sustainable society would obey, and employ the technology needed to make it happen.
View discussion

The planet cannot survive our remorseless pursuit of profit
19 Mar 2021 17:11
In response to cheesemanm85
Then nobody is ever qualified to judge the status quo they are trapped in and goodbye progress.
Nobody with a full belly is qualified to criticise poverty. Nobody silenced by a dictatorship is qualified to speak against it.
All is collusion.
Historically incorrect.
View discussion

18/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MayorofLondon
Women will never be safe on the streets, and boys will never grow up into real men until sexual propaganda is eradicated from the media and outside schools.
Images like this.
https://flickr.com/photos/biginabox/51033404601/in/photolist-2kqePza-2kqa41E-2kq9Kk9-2kKDxde-2kGZRYR-2kH3j5D-2kH4q3x-2kH52iZ-2kH4oE2-2kH7tFV….‘XMAS KISSES GUARANTEED!’Sexist poster Old Kent Road.flickr.com
10:24 AM · Mar 18, 2021·Twitter Web AppView Tweet activity

17/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Doubt over OAZ safety?
Simple. Conduct the same survey of other brands.
When the coincidence-level of blood clots is established, the doubt will go away.
4:28 PM · Mar 17, 2021·Twitter Web AppView Tweet activity

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @AndyGuy67 and @bbclaurak
After 125,000 deaths, the government needs ‘slagging off’ for betting everything on a magic cure instead of organising a working TT&I system. As endlessly advised by every expert outside a loony bin.
Cummings was willing for us to pay the price of ‘herd-immunity’, and we did.
7:28 PM · Mar 17, 2021·Twitter Web AppView Tweet activity

14/03/2021

If Boris Johnson is serious about levelling up, he would plan for a 2026 census now
14 Mar 2021 14:59
In response to Happyotter
The more deprived and hopeless the lifestyle, the fewer choices there are.
Healthy choices have never been readily available to the bottom of the pile.
It’s how those at the top of the pile stay there.
View discussion

If Boris Johnson is serious about levelling up, he would plan for a 2026 census now
14 Mar 2021 12:31
In response to Likewhatever
The lifestyles of hopelessness and inequality.
Very revealing about the reality of consumerism.
View discussion

12/03/2021

What happens if we’re not interested in going to the shops when they reopen?
12 Mar 2021 11:45
Real shops or online shops, the amount of shopping for useless consumer junk has to fall drastically. To something like vintage Austerity or Utility levels.
Otherwise, the next Pandemic is just around the corner, plus even more global warming.
View discussion

11/03/2021

The Green New Deal’s time has come – but what’s happened to Labour’s radicalism?
11 Mar 2021 14:30
Consumerism + Capitalism = Climate Change + Pandemics.
An open propaganda goal.
View discussion

08/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bulkbiker@Coronavirusgoo1and 2 others
Hilarious. A standard-issue Science Denialist who depends on Virology to create new vaccines to get back to ‘Normal’. Using computer modelling, just like Climatologists.
‘All science is fake – except when it creates a crutch for Consumerism.’
You’re a real Junkie.
8:45 PM · Mar 8, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bulkbiker@Coronavirusgoo1and 2 others
Models make your computer work, keep planes in the sky and put a man on the moon. The observed measurements are alarming enough. And they all contradict your superstitions. Show your evidence. Which scientists agree with you?
CLIMATE PILE-UP: Global Warming’s Compounding DangersClimate Central bridges the scientific community and the public, providing clear information to help people make sound decisions about the climate.climatecentral.org
5:41 PM · Mar 8, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bulkbiker@Coronavirusgoo1and 2 others
Like the ‘hypothesis’ that viruses can be killed by vaccines. Like the ‘hypothesis’ that the earth orbits the Sun. Anthropogenic Climate Change and Pandemics are happening. Your Stone Age denialism won’t save you.
EffectsVital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Long-term effects of global climate change in the United States.climate.nasa.gov
5:24 PM · Mar 8, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bulkbiker@Coronavirusgoo1and 2 others
So no Immunology either. Another ‘Fake’ science according to you.. So much for your ‘good news.’
All your delusions answered.
Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans | Carbon BriefThe science on the human contribution to modern warming is quite clear. Humans emissions and activities have caused around 100% of the warming observed.carbonbrief.org
5:06 PM · Mar 8, 2021·Twitter Web App

07/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @ProbablyEdded
“The world is facing 3 major crises today: the loss of biodiversity, climate change & the pandemic,” says biologist Cristián Samper at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “They are all interrelated, with many of the same causes and solutions”.
Rescue plan for nature: How to fix the biodiversity crisis | New Scientist
We’ve been ravaging the planet’s ecosystems for too long, but crucial decisions this year could be the turning point that help us restore our relationship with naturenewscientist.com
12:43 PM · Mar 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

06/03/2021

Remember those NHS volunteers? We need them now in the fight against Covid6 Mar 2021 18:32
In response to MbuyaHill
In an emergency of this scale, it’s more a case of non-obligatory mobilisation than volunteering.
Imagine if, last Spring, there had been a scheme using GCSE students to help with mass community testing; involving them in a key role in one of the most serious projects any generation has faced, and bringing them into contact with their community in a new way. As an adult. Making them part of the solution, not treating them as the problem. Making them part of History and giving them their own collective identity.
The take-up would not have been ‘sporadic’, and any shortfalls could be covered with a little political will.
Not only would this have generated much-needed self-respect, it would have been an education in itself while the schools were closed, if not an actual part of the syllabus (Covid Studies)
Thousands of lives would have been saved, but millions of lives would have been immensely enriched by the experience. And hopes raised.
Which would have been far too dangerous for the Johnson Cult to contemplate.
View discussion

Remember those NHS volunteers? We need them now in the fight against Covid
6 Mar 2021 17:17
Mobilising the community to fight Covid was obviously the logical option, and far more effective than Dido Harding’s bulti-billion pound phone-gimmick failure.
But to do that would have restored vibrant aspirational communities which the tories have sweated for decades trying to eradicate.
They’re not going to throw away all that hard work just to save thousands of lives.
View discussion

04/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @bulkbiker@Coronavirusgoo1and 2 othersI’ll keep asking until it sinks into your tiny mind. Which of the scientists posted do you know better than? How many billions of people are you prepared to kill to live in your myth? You obviously deny Climate change too. So which scientists do you AGREE with? Can you read?2:43 PM · Mar 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bulkbiker@Coronavirusgoo1and 2 others
I want to pay attention to what science has discovered. You want the world to die in its own filth to feed your addiction. I want fewer animals killed, obviously. And no more of their habitats destroyed. Is that too hard for your tiny mind to grasp? https://who.int/emergencies/diseases/2018prioritization-report.pdf?ua=1…
2:31 PM · Mar 4, 2021·Twitter Web App

03/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @ProbablyEdded
What you call ‘Normal’ created Climate Change and the Pandemic Era. It is doomed – unless maniacs like you and Trump succeed in deluding the world.
Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humansAs more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.nationalgeographic.com
5:21 PM · Mar 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @bulkbiker@Coronavirusgoo1and 2 others
Science has EVIDENCE. You have NOTHING.
‘Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people. ‘
‘A Pandemic EraA little over a year ago the word pandemic was, for most people, associated with disaster movies and history books. Despite repeated warnings about the very real risk of occurrence from infectious…thelancet.com
5:04 PM · Mar 3, 2021·Twitter Web App

How elimination versus suppression became Covid’s cold war
3 Mar 2021 15:17
In response to Bob_Helpful
They have probably died out or evolved out of recognition.
But the point is that they can be generated at the drop of a tree, and we have no defence against them.
And we are dropping more trees every day and forcing wild diseases into contact with our livestock, who then amplify the disease and kill us. Ironic, really.
The same damage which causes Global Warming is spewing out Pandemics like Covid, and worse. Covid could be a vital addition to the environmentalists’ arsenal.
David Attenborough is 94.
”Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including influenza, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people. Combined with highly interconnected globalised economies and rapid transport, this makes pandemics a rapidly growing risk.’
<a href=”‘Most of these emerging diseases and practically all pandemics including influenza, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, are caused by microbes in animals which “spill over” after repeated contact between wildlife, livestock, and people. Combined with highly interconnected globalised economies and rapid transport, this makes pandemics a rapidly growing risk.’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30305-3/fulltext
View discussion

How elimination versus suppression became Covid’s cold war3 Mar 2021 15:05
‘On average, over the past 500 years, humanity has seen three pandemics a century.’
‘Since the 1970s, it is estimated at least three dozen infectious diseases have emerged from human interference with animals, including Sars, Mers, Ebola, bird flu, swine flu and the Zika virus. As far back as 2007 the World Health Organisation warned that infectious diseases were emerging at a rate that had not been seen before.
The spread of the viruses is put down to a deadly combination of wildlife trafficking and consumption, increasing human encroachment into wildlife habitats as more people live in densely populated areas – and air travel, which enables pathogens to take hold globally.’
‘View discussion

02/03/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginaboxReplying to @ProbablyEdded
It will take much longer than 3 months to stop destroying the eco-system.
You talk as if Covid was the only Pandemic, and not merely the latest in a long line, all caused by the demands of ‘Normal’ Consumerism. With no end in sight. Read the science here.
Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global Warming.Never in the field of Human Experience, have so many been alienated from so many for so long.As a species, we are simply not used to this. And our veneer of civilisation is very thin. Especially ou…biginabox.com
4:38 PM · Mar 2, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @M555Jay@SDuke46and 2 others
America is the biggest per capita polluter in the world. And under Trump had no plans to reduce emissions. Your Denialism is almost total. People like You are ‘the problem’. USA 16 Tons/annum. China 7.
Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?There are large inequalities in the carbon footprint of people across the world. How do countries across the world compare? Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?ourworldindata.org
7:19 PM · Mar 2, 2021·Twitter Web App

01/03/2021

Replying to @copperwormUK@rushworth_peterand 8 others
So nobody can criticise anything they don’t create. Absurd and childish. Again.
4:58 PM · Mar 1, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @copperwormUK@rushworth_peterand 8 others
Good for him. As a politician who exploited an entire Empire, he would say that, wouldn’t he? The words of a real artist.
” your thoughts are never entirely your own. .If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe”
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_04…
4:46 PM · Mar 1, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Coronavirusgoo1 and @FoyChris
The bad news is that when we rush back to ‘normal’, we will merely be spewing out more zootic pathogens from the ashes of the forests we destroy.
And spewing out more greenhouse gases.
Covid is just the latest plague, not the last.
4:54 PM · Mar 1, 2021·Twitter Web App

28/02/2021

In Wales there will always be a warm welcome for referee Pascal Gaüzère
28 Feb 2021 10:44
In response to BigFatWinger
I blame the parents.
Biggar’s obviously sent him to the wrong public school.
Somewhere like Summerhill, probably.
View discussion

In Wales there will always be a warm welcome for referee Pascal Gaüzère
28 Feb 2021 10:39
‘I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
‘View discussion

[Comments closed before posting]
A readjustment is not a knock-on. And neither is ‘losing control’ if the ball goes backwards onto the player’s leg, then backwards again on to an opposing knee without touching the ground.
Sorry and all that, but it was a complex but clear decision for the TMO (not the ref). A flukey try but not a fake one.
Knock-on:
‘When a player loses possession of the ball and it goes forward, or when a player hits the ball forward with the hand or arm, or when the ball hits the hand or arm and goes forward, and the ball touches the ground or another player before the original player can catch it.’
Meanwhile, the ref’s interpretation of the advantage rule denied Wales two clear possible chances to score, one from within 10 yards. C’est la Rugby.

26/02/2021

Changes in Atlantic currents may have dire climate implications for the next century26 Feb 2021 20:16
In response to nomadian
The world’s problems are caused by rampant destruction of our ecosystem by a few out-of-control global corporations trying to win the Consumerism Rat Race. Not by Human Nature, which is essentially cooperative, or we would not have evolved this far. Reciprocal Social Altruism, the boffins call it. The demonisation of Human Nature is just medieval crowd-control. A convenient cop-out for apologists for the status quo – who never include themselves in the Legion of the Damned..
Climate Change and the Pandemic Era are just two sides of the same eco-cidal Consumerist madness. Many of the same factors trigger both. And it’s an even bet which one gets us first, as a civilisation. At the moment, my money’s on Plague before Flood.
Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans. We can’t win an arms race with Nature, living in a bunker of annual new vaccines.
The only long-term solution to both disasters is a return to a simpler, cooperative culture. Which rules out the perverting characteristics of the dominant, primitive power-politics of the last few thousand years – a mere blink of an eye in the full human story.
Time we achieved true ‘civilisation’ while we can.
“As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.“
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans/
https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/deforestation-makes-pandemics-more-likely-0View discussion

24/02/2021

Pandemic epics or great escapes? What classic movies might tell us about post-Covid Hollywood
24 Feb 2021 13:03
‘As the months roll on and vaccines neuter the virus, our attention might turn away from danger to the things we’ve missed.’
Like the fact that anthropomorphic climate disaster and anthropomorphic pandemics are two sides of the same Consumerist coin. Two forces that we have unleashed which are cooperating in perfect harmony, unlike Humanity in its perpetual rat-sack.
And that unless we stop destroying Nature, movies will be a distant memory.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @northumbrian_@AngelaRayner and @MattHancock
By ‘leave this here’ you presumably mean that you will hide from any responses. Fair enough.
I leave these.
How much did Labour donations cost the taxpayer? Compared with the Billions bunged by Boris to his chums.
How many 100’s of 1000’s of lives did Labour cost the UK?
11:54 AM · Feb 24, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@BiginaboxReplying to @fcukpoliticians and @BBCNews
You mean, in David Irving’s words: ‘Did 2.5 million really Die?’
It’s all a sinister red plot, obviously. Like the Holocaust.
Led by? For what purpose?
Let’s have the full gory details.
Meanwhile, the blind stampede back to ecocide continues.
11:41 AM · Feb 24, 2021·Twitter Web App

23/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @CfbMegan@PeterDaszak and @LastWeekTonight
Every burger we eat brings the next Pandemic nearer. If we want life to be controlled by successive generations of vaccines, all we have to do is return to ‘normal’.
4:37 PM · Feb 23, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Baddiel
‘Almost everything above the level of a railway timetable is propaganda… The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.’ – Orwell
4:49 PM · Feb 23, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MermaidsPurseJ and @MichaelRosenYes
On the contrary. The epidemiology of Coronaviruses is well-known.
It does not take ’20-20 hindsight’ but only everyday ‘2+2=4 FORESIGHT’ to avoid 100.000 deaths. As in New Zealand.
If Johnson wasn’t negligent, then he is incredibly stupid, and even less fit for office.
11:57 AM · Feb 23, 2021·Twitter Web App

Crocodile rolls and ‘jacklers’: rugby union’s law book needs a refresh
23 Feb 2021 11:39
In response to 11stone7
Why?
Just remove two side-rows from elite grounds (normally unsold anyway).
There is no alternative. Dick Best, Alan Watkins and others informed the Rugby World of this growing dilemma at the start of the professional era, but short-termism prevailed and now we have a growing epidemic of brain damage.
Rugby is for the benefit of players and spectators, not short-sighted, profit-driven, penny-pinching accountants and shareholders. The only way to cater for the massive increase in player bulk, momentum and mercenary aggression is to make collisions and congestion less easy.
The pitch has in effect been getting smaller every year since the introduction of the welfare state, especially in Britain. And the dimensions codified in the mid-C19th are not fit for use now by any stretch of the imagination.
And don’t be absurd and claim it would make no difference.
Even Eddie Jones knows better than that.
“Australia coach Eddie Jones made an official complaint to the International Rugby Board following his side’s 31-14 victory over Scotland at Murrayfield. Jones said pitch width had been reduced overnight to suit Scotland in the face of the Wallabies’ firepower out wide..”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/3989459.stm
View discussion

Easing lockdown will allow Covid to spread. Here’s how to mitigate the risks
23 Feb 2021 11:03
In response to Barnsy
Masking is pure courtesy and responsibility – until a vaccine emerges which can prevent infection and transmission.
The only problem with masks is that they make spectacle wearers walk into lamposts. Nobody has solved that problem yet.
View discussion

Easing lockdown will allow Covid to spread. Here’s how to mitigate the risks
23 Feb 2021 10:57
In response to Pol1ticalAn1mal
The Flu and cold rates have dropped through the floor in the last year.
Masks do work, or they would not be used in hospitals, or be an essential part of oriental culture for those with an infection.
View discussion

Easing lockdown will allow Covid to spread. Here’s how to mitigate the risks
23 Feb 2021 10:53
Johnson is ‘very clear’ that unlocking will be ‘led’ by ‘data not dates’. And to prove it he listed the dates. Four of them.
The data is on a need-to-know basis. We needn’t bother our little heads about it, since ‘Zero-Covid’ is an impossibility ( As in New Zealand) and the collateral damage among the expendable classes will be a price worth playing to get back to the business of producing greenhouse gases, poisoning the oceans, and generating the next pandemic by eradicating forests for livestock .
Just leave it all to Boris. He knows best.
View discussion.

22/02/2021

Boris Johnson says more deaths inevitable whenever lockdown lifts as he sets out roadmap for England – as it happened
22 Feb 2021 16:51
In response to BonyTony
A reminder of ecological common sense.
The next killer pandemic is just a matter of time if we return to ‘normal’ eco-cidal economics with its addiction to deforestation and industrial farming.
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that zootic pathogens such as Covid, Sars, Ebola and HIV are caused by many of the same factors which fuel Global Warming.
There can be no return to Consumerism As Usual, nomatter how many clever vaccines the Pharma-giants get rich on. It is the last thing we need.
And if we do get it, could be the last thing we ever get, as a functioning civilisation.
‘As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.’
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @PRDavo@RaverOldskool and @BBCNews
The BBC is obviously pressured by rabid reactionary tory vermin. They hate and fear it for the same reasons you do.
But they are not the state. And the BBC’s funding system, plus OFCOM, ensure unrivalled impartiality.
Name a more impartial one.
4:17 PM · Feb 22, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Myanmar_Now_Eng
At last a movement which uses the only truly effective weapon against tyranny – the General Strike. The tactic which renders guns and tear gas totally useless.
Weekend protest movements in Byelorus, Hong-Kong and Russia take note. The future of change is doing nothing.
1:05 PM · Feb 22, 2021·Twitter Web App

21/02/2021

Australia shows the way. It’s the job of governments not big tech to run democracies
21 Feb 2021 13:48
In response to Princhester
There is nothing ‘logical’ about an unaccountable company demanding to control the democratically elected governments of a sovereign state. Especially by denying essential information which saves lives.
That is more like premeditated homicide. Manslaughter at best.
Gunboat diplomacy in the finest traditions of the East India Company.
View discussion

Australia shows the way. It’s the job of governments not big tech to run democracies
21 Feb 2021 13:11
In response to Princhester
I’m ‘totally’ familiar with mega-corporations perverting democracy to make money.
Facebook is no different.
I don’t know which ‘middle’ is ‘excluded’, not that it means anything outside your jargon-ridden world.
Censoring essential national health information on a whim is anti-democratic.
View discussion

Australia shows the way. It’s the job of governments not big tech to run democracies
21 Feb 2021 11:5
In response to Princhester
‘Yeah! They should be forced to carry what the Australian government wants, even if they don’t want to. Totally fair.’
Yeah, Australia should be forced to only pass laws approved by Facebook
Totally democratic!
View discussion

Australia shows the way. It’s the job of governments not big tech to run democracies
21 Feb 2021 11:47
“the companies should be subjected to a tax used to support that same good journalism. A bit like the BBC licence fee, in other words. It is the price they have to pay for the consequences of their ultra-profitable business models and insane profit margins.”
It had to be said.
The ‘Licence to Print Money’ should have a cost.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @mrjamesob and @simon_schama
Like every reactionary abuse of language (e.g. ‘troll’) this is just another way of avoiding thought. Of destroying the power of discrimination.
Orwell’s ‘Newspeak’, in fact. The wholesale replacement of real words expressing a subtle range of meanings with a few all-purpose slurs.
6:52 PM · Feb 21, 2021·Twitter Web App

. Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @simon_schama and @Baddiel
So new? Adrenalin is an addictive drug. Everyone knew that. Trump merely put toxic popular power-worship on the stump. Just as Rap put it on stage.
5:15 PM · Feb 21, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Alannah223 and @newscientist
In the US, where Covid has been allowed to run riot, mutations are inevitable. The USA is definitely to blame for this new combinant.
” If individual host cells end up harbouring the two variants, the scene is set for recombination.”
1:43 PM · Feb 21, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Alannah223 and @newscientist
There is no evidence that China ‘was to blame’.
There is masses that Consumerism IS the cause of zootic pathogens.
Not that evidence means much to the Trumpist mentality.
Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global Warming.Never in the field of Human Experience, have so many been alienated from so many for so long.As a species, we are simply not used to this. And our veneer of civilisation is very thin. Especially ou…biginabox.com
1:37 PM · Feb 21, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Orwell_Society@NicolaRossi and @PushkinPress
“Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists.. need constant stimulation from other people.
It is almost impossible to think without talking.
If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe”
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_04…
1:30 PM · Feb 21, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @JohnStrawson and @jeffrey_bowers
Nothing Miller said was racist. Look the word up then quote his ‘racism’.
This paranoia is rapidly running out of steam as more people consult their dictionaries AND the official definition of ‘antisemitism’.
If all people are Equal, there is only one definition of racism.
1:25 PM · Feb 21, 2021·Twitter Web App

20/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @alina_garner@KevinPascoe and @GBSFacts
I’m reading accounts of Long Covid which sound like GBS. Especially in the ‘young’.
Avoid at all costs.
The Guillain-Barré ExperienceFairly Delirious Bedside notes. (January 2009 Transcripts.) T’was the Sunday before Xmas, and I felt fine except for that mousy tickle in the throat that signals a cold. It turned out to be t…biginabox.com
11:58 AM · Feb 20, 2021·Twitter Web App

19/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @CanonImages15 and @BBCPolitics
The law is the law.
“The secretary of state spent vast quantities of public money on pandemic-related procurements during 2020.
The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the relevant contracts were awarded.”
3:58 PM · Feb 19, 2021·Twitter Web App

18/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
As @DavidCicilline commented on seeing events unfold in Australia:
“Facebook is not compatible with democracy. Threatening to bring an entire country to its knees to agree to Facebook’s terms is the ultimate admission of monopoly power.
“Facebook unfriends Australia – a war with a sovereign nation that might yet boomerang back on it…Facebook’s assault on Australia – a step too far at last?diginomica.com
7:48 PM · Feb 18, 2021·Twitter Web App

17/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @greenvanman1 and @OwenJones84
Because, like all expressions of primitive, paranoid politics, every word it uses means the opposite of the true meaning. Despots are very good at Newspeak, and at appeasing the basest instincts and inflaming the deepest fears based on ignorance.
7:14 PM · Feb 17, 2021·Twitter Web App

Only a progressive alliance can defeat the Conservatives at the next election
17 Feb 2021 16:09 In response to FFC800
‘The concept of an alliance is just such a nonsense.’
Defeatist nonsense.
When the science finally sinks in, and people are forced to make the radical, progressive political choices essential to rescuing civilisation from climate change and waves of pandemics, the only movement compatible with our needs will be a fusion of Green environmentalism and social cooperation.
There will be no place for the morbid obsession with petty profit and the obscene waste of ‘normality’.
View discussion

16/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @KhakiFletch@AyishaMuhamadand 2 others
We’ve NEVER committed such sabotage as now. Which is why we’re creating successive pathogens, and poisoning the air and oceans. Pandemics and Climate change are just two sides of the same coin.
Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global Warming.Never in the field of Human Experience, have so many been alienated from so many for so long.As a species, we are simply not used to this. And our veneer of civilisation is very thin. Especially ou…biginabox.com
8:50 PM · Feb 16, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @thecountof1
You need this. Real science, as opposed to paranoid fantasy.
“We’ve been warning about this for decades,”
says Kate Jones, ecological modeller at U.C.L and an author on the study, published 5/08 in Nature1.
“Nobody paid any attention.”
Why deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likelyResearchers want to use this information to predict and stop future outbreaks.nature.com
3:11 PM · Feb 16, 2021·Twitter Web App

15/02/2021

The next pandemic? It may already be upon us
15 Feb 2021 14:14
In response to Aljoto
Sorry to make you cry, but the science confirming man-made Pandemics is as irrefutable as that behind man-made global warming. Both disasters have many of the same causes, and will demand the same economic sacrifices to combat them both.
‘Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans
As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.‘
View discussion

The next pandemic? It may already be upon us
15 Feb 2021 14:07
The next pandemic is just a matter of time if we return to ‘normal’ eco-cidal economics with its addiction to deforestation and industrial farming.
The scientific consensus is that zootic pathogens such as Covid, Sars, Ebola and HIV are caused by many of the same factors which fuel Global Warming.
‘As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.’
It is incredible that Greenpeace, F.O.E. XT Rebellion, and the green movement in general has not seized this golden opportunity to press its case. David Attenborough seems completely oblivious to the research.
Given the rate we are creating new pathogens with every burger we eat, we may not need rising sea-levels and forest fires to finish off civilisation, viruses may do it first.
View discussion

14/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Damo_bass@FranGates19 and @anthonywatson_
Whose ‘police’? The one run by the Klan & other racist terrorists?
Obviously. A radical reform of law-enforcement is decades overdue:
“hundreds of police officers were members of private hate groups – where they regularly posted racist & anti-Semitic content”
“Cops and the Klan”: Police Disavowal of Risk and Minimization of Threat from the Far-RightCritical scholars argue that contemporary policing practices reproduce colonial logics through the maintenance of racial and economic inequality.
In this article, I extend the framing of policing as…link.springer.com
12:42 PM · Feb 14, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
“The Italian researchers’ findings, published by Tumori Journal show 11.6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 had developed coronavirus antibodies well before February
Researchers find coronavirus was circulating in Italy earlier than thoughtThe new coronavirus was circulating in Italy in September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows,
signaling that it might have spread beyond China…reuters.com
8:41 PM · Feb 14, 2021·
Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MikeSpe18625718
It says that chickenshit republicans have colluded to destroy US democracy.
No matter, Trump will be doing 5-10 on a Georgian chain-gang soon.
What else do you deny? Is there ANY Science you accept? The problem with only believing Trump is that reality gets in the way eventually.
10:54 AM · Feb 14, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @guardian
Without anonymity, employers would have control over the free speech of every worker they owned.
Small-businesses would be crippled by wedge-issues like Brexit.
Political opinions would be punished.
The Trotskyite clerk would be obliterated.
10:48 AM · Feb 14, 2021·Twitter Web App

13/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @JaneElizabeth04@steele1945 and @PattyArquette
Trumpism a fascist cult as paranoid as any other. And caused by the same encroachment of the real world on sacred territory of myths and superheroes.
Climate Change and its political implications has totally destroyed their obsolete Hollywood frontier ‘Identity’
.1:05 PM · Feb 13, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MikeSpe18625718
‘Clear’ to braindead fanatics. As ‘clear’ as Jihad is to DAESH.
Your Holy War is just as barbaric. A denial that 2+2=4. Which is why you have to deny Science. Why it’s all a sinister red plot to you in your ‘Post-Truth’ Fascism. Orwell’s 1984
.12:59 PM · Feb 13, 2021·Twitter Web App

11/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MikeSpe18625718
He doesn’t have to use those words to be responsible for inciting murder.
His plan for Jan 6th is self-evident from the facts – his own words and actions. He knew what the mob wanted to do and did nothing to stop it. In fact he urged them on the steps as they chanted ‘HANG PENCE’.
7:02 PM · Feb 11, 2021·Twitter Web App

09/02/2021

Parents, don’t worry if your child knows more about grammar than you do
9 Feb 2021 12:47
Drilling the jargon and mechanics of grammar into children is no substitute for a wholesome culture of reading well-written books, and discussing them inj detail.
My generation was ‘taught’ grammar in much the same way it was ‘taught’ maths – only the nerds gained any insight. The rest of us floundered in a swamp of impenetrable gibberish, and when we left school were glad to be rid of the torture for life.
View discussion

07/02/2021

I learned by touring Europe in the 60s. Young artists need the same chance7
Feb 2021 18:38
In response to NotBannedYet

people now need to fill in a few forms.

A lot of forms.
And pay a lot of money. Money which the small, independent companies who provide much of the originality and diversity in British Theatre simply cannot afford. And neither can their audiences.
If a bland homogenised culture is what you want, you are going to get it.
Congratulations
View discussion

I learned by touring Europe in the 60s. Young artists need the same chance
7 Feb 2021 18:325 
A quick scan of the What’s On pages of regional theatre websites already shows a drastic decline in diversity for the next two seasons.
The only foreign companies seem to be the usual state-sponsored behemoths (Vienna Theatre Ballet etc) and a very few british-based emigres.
The rest is a list of tribute bans, stand-ups, Audiences With, and other sparse productions. And all to half-houses.
It’s as if Brexit was designed to kill British Theatre. Outside wartime, it has never been more difficult to tour Foreign talent in Britain.
View discussion

05/02/2021

Is Rishi Sunak the most dangerous man in government?
5 Feb 2021 13:29
In response to RoyalSparta

Given his experience and record, he would have known instinctively to harness the community, from the start, making the people the solution not the problem, as Johnson has done. He would not have waited 10months to be forced to introduce community testing, but done so as soon as possible, saving thousands of lives – but reviving a sense of community the tories need desperately to stifle. They do not want a repeat of the last time we were all asked to ‘Do Our Bit’.
And he would not have made his rich cronies even richer – because he has none.
The perfect man for the job of taming a Consumerist Plague like Covid – the product of a perverted economics, to paraphrase Churchill.

02/02/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @Channel4News
Dai Gorillas completely missing the point on Pandemic Science. Blaming the means of global distribution (air travel) rather than the cause – global deforestation and industrialised Junk Food.
His faith in businessmen is also wishful thinking.
Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humansAs more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.nationalgeographic.com
8:25 PM · Feb 2, 2021

01/02/2021

I feared the social isolation of lockdown most – but I’m tougher than I thought
1 Feb 2021 19:30 
Planet Covid is permanent play by Samuel Beckett.
With everyone marinading in pointless, absurd isolation.
A proxy existence of denied instincts and senses.
And all our fault. A global prison we built for ourselves with every Junk-farmed burger and every forest cleared.
View discussion

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @BBCNews
How many racist posts has he reported? If we cared about eradicating racism, we would report it at every opportunity. The fact it persists means we don’t report and so don’t care.
Blaming the platforms is a cop-out. Users could deal with this problem by putting words into actions
11:49 AM · Feb 1, 2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @BobToth9@Sceptictank1 and @michaelwhite
The EU did it to save European lives by preventing EU stocks being smuggled into the UK.
Johnson did it to try and look tough for his rabble.
Northern Ireland is now a giant Smuggler’s Cove for goods of all kinds.
11:35 AM · Feb 1, 2021

31/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @michaelwhite
Even more predictable is the mass-assumption that a vaccine paid for by the people should be exploited for profit.
At a time like this ‘intellectual property rights’ are an obscenity.
Pure Carpetbagging.
9:57 AM · Jan 31, 2021·

30/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @normanbagley1@michaelwhite and @JeffRookerj
As opposed to 1/week by BJ. Including: “I can certainly guarantee that, if there are serious problems in supplying supermarkets in Northern Ireland – because of some piece of bureaucracy that’s misapplied – then we will simply exercise Article 16..”
Boris Johnson warned he will damage relations with Biden if he breaches Northern Ireland agreement
‘It would do huge damage to the Good Friday Agreement….and damage the relationship between our country and the US’independent.co.uk
1:36 PM · Jan 30, 2021·

27/01/2021 Holocaust Memorial Day

How worried should we be about the new Covid variants?
27 Jan 2021 16:09
New Covid variants are just the start.
There is no argument that we have now entered what scientists are calling the ‘Pandemic Era’. Coronavirus is just the latest zootic pathogen to cross to humans after being generated by Human activity.
‘Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems
Our results suggest that global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.’
Nature.
Since any vaccine will be useless against the next inevitable Consumerist-generated Pandemic in a few years, all we have left is barrier methods for protection.
Until we stop destroying the environment to produce disease-ridden meat, we are merely commanding the tide to turn.
The vaccine arms race against nature will be as socially destructive as every other unwinnable war.
View discussion

Holocaust Day Thought for Today.
“Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it.
Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.”
― Primo Levi, The Black Hole of Auschwitz
Trumpism in a nutshell.

26/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @MarkHazard2020
Still trying to deny Thatcher’s war-crimes in order to justify your choice of a PM who has overseen the highest Covid death-rates in the world. 100,000 dead now and counting, as are the bungs in the backpockets of Johnson’s cronies.
Who would Corbyn have been in hoc to? Nobody.
12:31 PM · Jan 26, 2021·

23/01/2021

Pubs are part of Britain’s fabric. Why are they not being properly helped?
23 Jan 2021 13:35
Why are they not being properly used?
With a St John’s medic, and an NHS Community Steward Volunteer, most pubs could act as vaccination centres, and play a significant role in fighting Covid. And help rebuild communities devastated before Covid was ever heard of.
Unfortunately for us all, this excuse for a government despises and fears the idea of a healthy network of local communities. Each ‘Doing It’s Bit’. The last time the power of solidarity was harnessed, the NHS was created.
So Johnson & Co would fight any such initiative tooth and nail.
View discussion

22/01/2021 (LOCKDOWN DAY 300)

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @Insurance_Rich and @BBCNews
The ‘key’ is to end the toxic Consumerist sabotage of the environment which spawns Zootic Pathogens like Covid. It’s only a matter of time before the next one hits. “https://nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans/…
“>Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans.
As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.
nationalgeographic.com
4:08 PM · Jan 22, 2021·

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @BBCNews
Because, in spite of what they think, young people are not immortal. Today is the 300th day since the 1st Lockdown on March 23rd.
4:01 PM · Jan 22, 2021·

20/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @ClareOFlynn
This was not a question of ’20/20 hindsight’ but of ‘2+2 FORESIGHT’.
The kind every half-competent planner possesses. ‘Common sense’, not Quantum Mechanics.
As shown by the polls, which regularly find the public is way ahead of government policy.
3:13 PM · Jan 20, 2021·


Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @michaelwhite
Angry, armed, and impossible to convince. Truth and Reconciliation first demands an agreement on what is true. Trumpists cannot accept the truth that 2=2=4.
In America’s gangster culture, they can only be bribed, not convinced by reason.
2:56 PM · Jan 20, 2021·

17/01/2021

A brutal Covid legacy awaits our children. We need the will and ambition to tackle it
17 Jan 2021 14:32 In response to praha7

It would seem that the electorate don’t really want radical change even when it’s offered.

If you were a Junkie, would you want your dealer put in jail?
View discussion

A brutal Covid legacy awaits our children. We need the will and ambition to tackle it
17 Jan 2021 14:30
‘We need the will and ambition to’ rebuild local communities destroyed by a combination of the Right to Buy Swindle, and the assorted toxic effects of Junky Consumerism which have reduced what was once a society into an incoherent mass of mortgage-slaves fighting each other for scraps from billionaire tables.
The saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ has never been truer, or more difficult to achieve.
View discussion

While Covid pushes the NHS to breaking point, private healthcare is thriving
14 Jan 2021 18:29
WHAT DID
YOU
DO IN THE COVID WAR
B.U.P.A?
View discussion

16/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @NickCohen4
All Denialists are trying to defend an obsolete ‘Identity’. Covid MUST be a fraud, because if science is right about it, it has to be right on Global Warming, and all the sabotage of Junky Consumerism – which is all they have.
So all Science has to be an evil plot.

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @Tweetin_Penguin and @OwenJones84
Class identity is not ‘identity politics’, it is the ONLY politics which can achieve radical change.
12:45 PM · Jan 16, 2021·

13/01/2021

Trump’s British cheerleaders are rushing to denounce him. It’s too little, too late
12 Jan 2021 16:48
It is America’s disgrace that a fascist like Trump appeals most to its working classes.
This is due to the fact that throughout U.S. history, the organisation of labour and collective bargaining have been systematically persecuted, legislated and criminalised out of the culture. Leaving a bleached social skeleton in contempt of human rights and incapable of significant collective action in its own interest.
View discussion

12/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @michaelwhite
What ‘viscous’ bigotry’? Anger at fascism is a duty not a prejudice.
Nice to be able to be so sanguine about it.
5:01 PM · Jan 12, 2021·

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @JuliaHB1 and @SadiqKhan
ANY excuse to score political points by undermining solidarity.
Like the Common Cold & flu, Covid is spread by particles drifting in the air. In Asian countries, masks in public are a social duty willingly adopted to prevent infection.
What is your problem with society?
3:17 PM · Jan 12, 2021

10/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @BurnMarks1962@lordchriswilcok and @michaelwhite
The Chartists and Suffragettes ‘rioted’. They had good cause. So did the students – not that they rioted at all. Demolishing a few barriers designed to cause trouble is not ‘rioting’.
Neither is defacing a symbol of war-worship
5:59 PM · Jan 10, 2021·

08/01/2021

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @beverleysharon1 and @Nigel_Farage
Then you’re as perverted and sick as him and his fellow megalomaniacs of history.
The EU represents everything that Trump hates and fears. A union of partners seeking peace and prosperity. Humanity at its best. Not your blatant Neo-fascism.

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @Nigel_Farage
Mealy-mouthed humbug. Do you condemn Trump or not?
The nutter is clearly a danger to national and possibly international security. Everyone knew he was a megalomaniac psychopath all along. And YOU kissed his feet.
How does that make you FEEL?
9:12 PM · Jan 8, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon@Biginabox Replying to @Nigel_Farage
Then you will now issue an unequivocal condemnation of the actions of Trump. But sadly, your brain is perfectly capable of the doublethink needed to equate his dictatorship with ‘freedom’.
9:09 PM · Jan 8, 2021·Twitter Web App

07/12/2021

@Biginabox Replying to @guardian
Toxic, psychopathic, dog-eat-dog American culture is responsible for this toxic psychopath and his neo-fascist gang of Redshirts. This attempted Putsch was the natural consequence of the cult of Consumerist Profit-Worship which is destroying the environment.
11:33 AM · Jan 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

@Biginabox Replying to @michaelwhite
Sad to see you don’t have much of an imagination. Corbyn’s entire career has been rooted in local community organisations. He is totally aware of the vast resource which Johnson has ignored, & would have recruited it. He would NOT have made any cronies richer, because he has none
11:26 AM · Jan 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

@Biginabox Replying to @markshackley and @brianmoore666
And how many presidents can you name that incited ‘riot in the streets’, let alone an invasion of the seat of democracy? And how many Trumpists have been murdered by police?
The two causes do not equate. Rioting at institutional murder is a duty more than a capital offence.
11:22 AM · Jan 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

Rob Kenyon @Biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
“left as well as right ” Bollox. You sound as snaky as Jan Haiper-Hayes on @BBCNews equating Trump’s neo-fascists with @BLM.
Stop peddling the toxic myth that there is symmetry in politics. Trump is a symptom of a sickness.
BLM and anti-fascism are essential responses to it.
11:13 AM · Jan 7, 2021·Twitter Web App

06/01/2012

FROM WRITTEN

Georgia looks safe for the Democrats, and with it Biden’s presidency.
Trump thugs roaming around Washington, baying on command.
Over 2.5K U.S. deaths per day. More on the way after Trump’s latest Super-spreader event today.
He says he is going to present proof of election fraud.
Why not before?
Some commentators are finally calling him insane. About time. Worse, his rallies are Hate-Spreaders. A direct attack on democracy, Truth and thought itself.
The mistake is to confuse it with mere propaganda, or bias.
It puts itself above facts. Propaganda can be shamed into silence or retraction by evidence.
Trumpism only recognises claims which it agrees with or serve its purpose. Which makes it fascist.
Goebells knew that the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ was a fraud, but was happy since it served his purpose.
“We’re going to march to The Capitol, and I’ll be with you!” Says Trump, inciting mayhem.

Trump scum trying to storm Congress. Pence escorted from the building. McConnell urging rebel Republicans to stand down.
Between now and the Inauguration should be fun, especially tonight. That much organised Hate doesn’t just fade away. It targets the weakest.

04/01/2021

FROM WRITTEN DIARY

Trump caught red-handed bullying senior Georgia Election official into ‘finding’ enough votes to steal the election. Clear corruption and a state offence he could be jailed for. (One-hour telephone call)
At the same time, ten previous security advisors, including one chosen by Trump, have warned against use of the military. As if they know Trump has one last desperate lunacy up his sleeve.
Mass fascist demo called by Trump for Wednesday (in Washington), when Congress authorises Biden victory.
Anything possible.

03/01/2021

‘Open all schools!’ ‘Close all schools!’ What England really needs is creative thinking
3 Jan 2021 16:28

There is only one subject on the immediate curriculum – Pandemic Studies (Theory and Practical).
Most student would get a better education by being used to combat the virus alongside the St John’s Ambulance, the Civil Defence, and all the other forces which could be harnessed in a peripatetic capacity to run mass testing and vaccination centres in workplaces, schools and shopping centres. As in the mobile X-Ray program of the 1950’s..
Homework would be to chronicle their experiences, and research the science – which would also give invaluable insight into the causes of Global Warming.
With some ‘creative thinking’, this is a golden opportunity to destroy the sterile treadmill of education which was seldom anything but a Consumerist Madrassar.
View discussion

30/12/2020

Covid has decimated the live music business – and its unsung heroes30 Dec 2020 13:00In response to MontoyaFan

“Science isn’t something one reads”

Especially if you need you avoid the truth in order to cling on to your sterile, defunct, primitive consumerist religion.
Don’t read this. It will BURN! And after all, you know better than every scientist on Earth. So why should anyone listen to anyone else?
Which Nobel Prize are you expecting for your insights? Peace, Medicine or Idiocy?

“Stopping deforestation, regulating wildlife trade may prevent future pandemics
Deforestation and trade in wildlife are increasing the risk that novel viruses as devastating as SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and HIV will pass from animals to humans. Investing in efforts to prevent deforestation and regulate wildlife trade may be a cost-effective way to prevent future pandemics, according to a new study co-authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Aaron Bernstein. The researchers found that prevention initiatives, such as direct forest-protection payments and regulations to stop the trade in species that present the greatest risk for zoonotic disease transmission, would cost as little as $22 billion a year—2% of the economic and mortality costs of responding to the global COVID-19 pandemic, which some economists predict could reach $10 trillion to $20 trillion.” Harvard School of Public Health

View discussion

29/12/2020

Covid has decimated the live music business – and its unsung heroes29 Dec 2020 13:55In response to MontoyaFan

Garbage.
We know all about the wet-market, but that was where it was first discovered to have been transmitted to humans, not where it originated.
You’re a glutton for punishment, but serve as a useful trawl-net for vital evidence – however much you deny science.

‘The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its plan to investigate the origins of the COVID pandemic. The search will start in Wuhan — the Chinese city where the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was first identified — and expand across China and beyond. ‘ ‘Nature’.

Meanwhile Consumerism stands further condemned. Every burger brings Covid 20 that bit nearer.

‘Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems
Our results suggest that global changes in the mode and the intensity of land use are creating expanding hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease.’ ( Nature)

View discussion

28/12/2020

Covid has decimated the live music business – and its unsung heroes28 Dec 2020 15:20In response to MontoyaFan
You have no evidence.
All the evidence since Spanish Flu points in one direction.
To Consumerism with its factory farming, deforestation, and toxification of the atmosphere producing even more stress on the environment.
Which of the several reports I cited do you disagree with most? And how?
And just what are you denying?
Man-made Global-Warming? Man-made zootic pathogens, or both?
Because you can’t deny one without the other.
Yours is the ‘dogma’ – that Consumerism is always right, and the Market will Provide.
View discussionCovid has decimated the live music business – and its unsung heroes28 Dec 2020 14:53In response to MontoyaFan
I’m afraid it’s an insurmountable piece of science as solid as the Greenhouse Effect – largely because it is caused by the same Human activities. Or do you deny that too?

‘Why we are just as much to blame for Covid 19 as we are for Global Warming’.
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/statements/preventing-next-pandemic-zoonotic-diseases-and-how-break-chain

If-you-want-pandemics-build-factory-farms
https://farmsnotfactories.org/articles/if-you-want-pandemics-build-factory-farms/

‘Expert-brands-factory-farms-destructive-weapon’
https://www.plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/expert-brands-factory-farms-destructive-weapon-coronavirus

‘Timeline of pandemics and other viruses that humans caught by interacting with animals’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-pandemic-viruses-animals-bird-swine-flu-sars-mers-ebola-zika-a9483211.html

‘Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans
‘As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.’
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/deforestation-leading-to-more-infectious-diseases-in-humans/

‘These so-called zoonotic diseases, which include six out of every ten infectious diseases in people, in turn, arise most readily in contexts where humans interact with wildlife. This commonly happens at the forest margin, which often expands where there is deforestation and forest fragmentation.’
https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/deforestation-makes-pandemics-more-likely-0
View discussion

Covid has decimated the live music business – and its unsung heroes
28 Dec 2020 14:35
In response to MontoyaFan

‘Guns or Butter’ was the motto of the nazis.
The motto of Humanism is
‘Bread and Roses.’
Times like this sort out the barbarians from the civilised.
If you really do see this as a war against nature, then why not go all the way and mobilise as if for war?
Appropriate BUPA hospitals, which have spent the last 9 mopnths making profit from their usual harvest of Gout and Bunions..
Recruit students as troops in an effective Track Test Trace and Isolate programme. They will be getting a far more relevant education from their experiences of real life than they ever would being trained for ‘careers’ which will be obsolete in ten years.
Impose genuine wartime Utility levels of consumption to stifle the environmental destruction which is now spawning successive generations of ever-more lethal zootic pathogens.
View discussion

27/12/2020

TV: Euan Ferguson’s 10 best of 202027
Dec 2020 21:28
In response to Sidshowmel
But not as much as the advertising you gladly pay to subsidise commercial TV of all sorts.
And far less than it would cost for any other network which offered half as much. (‘Netflix’ radio/news/ anyone?)
Plus the fact that its funding system is a unique barrier to commercial pressure and resulting bias.
The piper is not paid to play any tune but ‘Inform. Educate, and Entertain.’ A brief which is enforced by statute. And which can only be abused by government at the risk of electoral punishment.
In spite of the ravings of a few troublemakers, the BBC is trusted more than any other network, and its funding no more resented than that of the NHS, to which it serves a parallel purpose.
Both are a national service, run not for profit, and so are hated by the enemies of the post-war social contract.
What DID You Do In The Covid War Netflix/BUPA?
View discussion

Covid has decimated the live music business – and its unsung heroes
27 Dec 2020 21:12
None more ruined than those companies which rely on foreign artists, which provides a huge proportion of British theatrical diversity.

‘On entry to this country EU artists will need a three-month certificate from a UK registered immigration sponsor. If the sponsor is not willing to back them financially while they are here, the artist may be asked to demonstrate that they have access to £945 in cash and to agree not to seek public assistance if they fall into hardship while in the UK.
Artists will also probably need private health insurance or health cover from the promoter of the show, or else they may be asked to pay the government’s health surcharge of £470 giving access to the NHS.
Although performers can take the chance of bringing guitars and costumes as personal luggage, for any valuable items they are strictly speaking required to have a “carnet” document exempting such items from importation duties and from customs impoundment. The London Chamber of Commerce carnet charges are £351 per item or £562 if needed at short notice.’ (Flamenco News)

This will put every small touring company out of business, eliminating an entire artform from British venues.

View discussion

23/12/2020

Rob Kenyon @Biginabox Replying to @GuardianJobs
Those with ‘Life-Plans’ need to rediscover Real Life, and the fact that it doesn’t go to plan.
This generation of students could be the best-educated for centuries if they learned from this experience how to improvise rather than obey.
4:39 PM · Dec 23, 2020·Twitter Web App

4/12/2020

UK infection rates roughly down to October levels.
But if Xmas goes wrong, we’ll be back in the shit in January.

3/12/2020

3,000+ U.S. deaths from Covid reported for yesterday. A whole 9/11 deathtoll.
Infection rates doubling, and over 100,000 in hospital. No sign of Trump taking action. UK deaths now over 60,000 in total. Heading rapidly for the total killed by the Luftwaffe between 1939-45.
60,000 UK deaths. almost as many as killed by the Luftwaffe  

  Rob Kenyon @Biginabox Replying to @BBCWorld and @BBCNews
Sour grapes? Or resentment that a truly socialised health care system got there first? Rob Kenyon @Biginabox Replying to @MaggieW82391432 and @guardian Wrong. Excess deaths over 61K.
https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/static-reports/mortality-surveillance/excess-mortality-in-england-latest.html…5:33 PM · Dec 3, 2020·Twitter Web AppAm I disabled? To be honest, I’ve never felt I have the right to say so2 Dec 2020 20:30In response to Haggala
Sounds like all the problems you face are caused by a short-sighted, punitive competitive job-market.
They might go away in a more cooperative environment such as a charity or local community work.
This might be the perfect time to hitch your skills to a different wagon. One which shares the efforts and rewards. Or, more than that, where the effort is the greatest reward. A life running on endorphins not andrenalin.
View discussion

02/12/2020

Am I disabled? To be honest, I’ve never felt I have the right to say so2 Dec 2020 11:35In response to Gulp_Gulp

there are 11million disabled people in UK

Are there? I am ‘Registered Disabled’, but still have most of my abilities. I am not a car made useless and ‘disabled’ by a flat tyre or blown gasket. Most of the time I am fully functional. I am merely handicapped by a complaint which prevents me doing certain work in certain conditions. Like almost everyone else. Like a thoroughbred racehorse carrying a few extra pounds to make the race more exciting.
The language we use is important. The ‘disabled’ are literally ‘in-valid’. The handicapped are just that. Valid, able members of society who have to adjust, adapt, and work that bit harder.
I know which I’d rather be seen as.
View discussion

Am I disabled? To be honest, I’ve never felt I have the right to say so
2 Dec 2020 11:25 In response to Haggala
We live in a deeply entrenched competitive culture, where the weak go to the wall, which actively encourages alienation and is deeply suspicious of empathy.
The rest is history.
View discussion

1/12/2020

(From Written)
Debenhams on the rocks after 200 years trading. Philip Green on his yacht accusing everyone of jealousy – stirred up by the ‘hostile media’ A typical 2020 attitude.

New findings on the damage of ‘Long-Covid’. The message to under 40’s has to be that they may not die, but may be crippled for life.
Johnson playing politics with Labour’s inevitable, rational; decision to abstain on his unsubsidised Lockdown, which will deny cash to the most vulnerable and force them back to work, endangering everyone and undermining the entire project.
If this 2-month cycle of streching the elastic goes on much longer, public attitudes could get nasty, with altercations over mask-wearing etc.

Trump’s Attorney General (Bill Barr) tells him the game is up. There are no irregularities which could remotely make any difference. Trump furious and has set his lawyer-dogs loose. His personal lawyers are now attacking his own government’s top lawyer. Priceless.
Meanwhile Guiliani begging for a Blank Pardon (just in case). The entire crew are now tearing out each other’s guts or running for cover. When it’s all over, Trump will still have his lynchmobs and a few paid cronies and lickspittles in his bunker, and will continue to try and destroy America.

Am I disabled? To be honest, I’ve never felt I have the right to say so
1 Dec 2020 11:45
If you don’t ask for that Freedom Pass you don’t get it.
As another person with an invisible handicap, I say use it or end up indirectly endorsing discrimination.
View discussion

29/11/2020

Rob Kenyon @Biginabox
Replying to @IAmFrankButcher and @guardian
Using the babyword ‘troll’ always means the user has run out of brainpower, or they would find a real word for what they mean. ‘Troll’ means anything you want.
11:06 AM · Nov 29, 2020·Twitter Web App

25/11/2020

Berlin’s rent cap offers a new way of thinking about Britain’s housing crisis25 Nov 2020 14:50In response to RD400E
Not as happy as you would be to see a plague of homelessness and the devastation of town centres.
Landlords have cashed in on this crisis.
Payback time.
View discussion

Berlin’s rent cap offers a new way of thinking about Britain’s housing crisis
25 Nov 2020 14:47
A major factor in the wholesale massacre of small businesses is the rent they have to pay.
What sacrifices do their landlords have to make?
Clearly, to ‘be in it together’ and for ‘Everyone to Do Their Bit’, a significant slice of the profits of those sectors now reaping the rewards of Covid, such as the chainstore giants, landlords and Amazon, should be pooled to share the burden.
Instead we have a system of Carpetbaggers and refugees. And when the vaccines allow the re-opening of desolate High Streets, the only beneficiaries will be those able to buy and control them even further.
‘When the Going Gets Tough, the Rich Go Shopping’
View discussion

Johnson looks worn down, but the ‘Boris effect’ may yet return
25 Nov 2020 10:17 In response to Veraanthony
‘The socio-economic reality’ of modern politics depends on Credit-Rating, as it always did.
The less collateral/capital/security you can show a bank manager, the more working class you are. And the less likely you are to get a loan.
The more debt you can show him, the more aristocratic you are. And more likely to get a bail-out.
View discussion

20/11/2020

Even in this year of Covid, New York just can’t say no to Thanksgiving
20 Nov 2020 15:57
Think harder.
And it isn’t just Thanksgiving.
That’s just a bonus for the Junk-Peddlers.
The original role of the midwinter festival has reversed from taking stock to making stock. From being a useful perspective on the months gone and those to come, to unsustainable excess.
View discussion

Even in this year of Covid, New York just can’t say no to Thanksgiving

20 Nov 2020 15:07In response to ghotiface
Is it ‘Human Nature’ to avoid and neglect family except when bribed by excess and mere convention?
View discussion

Even in this year of Covid, New York just can’t say no to Thanksgiving
20 Nov 2020 15:05 One day we’ll wake up to the obscenity of an economy that demands a midwinter Junk-Binge to get it through the rest of the year.
But by then both the atmosphere and the oceans will probably be poisoned beyond antidote.
View discussion

19/11/2020

UK coronavirus: cases slightly down on previous week; Brexit talks paused after EU official tests positive – as it happened
19 Nov 2020 14:16
The highest excess deaths in peacetime for a century, I bet.
And that in spite of what must have been a drastic reduction in the numbers of deaths from annual Common Flu due to unprecedented mask-wearing and distancing.
Anyone know anyone who’s a had a dose of flu, or even the sniffles in the last 8 months?
That will be due to masks.
No wonder Japan has one of the most productive workforces in the world.
Covid has now killed more Britons than the Blitz of 1940-41, and is rapidly approaching the total of 61,000 for the entire war.
View discussion

18/11/2020

Think Joe Biden’s victory marks the end of rightwing populism? Think again
18 Nov 2020 14:56
America likes to parade itself as a ‘multicultural’ society, but in reality it is merely a mass of ghettoes only united by hate, suspicion and ruthless competition to survive a proudly inhumane system.
Along the same route and within 20miles of each other, every town will be a monoculture of one ethnicity or another, where outsiders are not welcome.
View discussion

From Written.
It’s the same Constitutional doublethink and winner-takes-all mentality that allowed them to deny the nature of slavery.
The sort of magic thinking that insists that if it was written down by Jefferson or Lincoln, it must exist – regardless of the reality. A lot like production figures under one of Stalin’s 5-Year Plans.
A gangster power-ideology summed up by Coppola:
“In our family we would keep the trade with the dark people. They’re animals anyway – so let them lose their souls.”

17/11/2020

Boris Johnson’s saboteur is back, and looking strangely familiar
17 Nov 2020 15:46
I hear on BBC that Sunak was in the East End yesterday peddling his crackpot ‘Free Ports’, which will be able to circumvent planning, ride roughshod over international regulations, import and export regardless of accepted produce standards, and basically impose a rabid US style trade deal by the backdoor.
In other words, setting up exactly the kind of offshore Singapore everyone was warned about during the Brexit Fever, and which was repeatedly denied by ministers and other misfits hoping to quietly sabotage the British way of life.
Any more news on this next big story?
View discussion

Boris Johnson’s saboteur is back, and looking strangely familiar
17 Nov 2020 13:44
In response to EpicNinjaCowboy

the SNP are resoundingly popular in Scotland, as is Nicola Sturgeon. Ever wonder why?

Because, like Merkel, she comes across as a rational human being, regardless of her ideology.
Plus the fact that the SNP is not a ‘nationalist’ organisation but an ‘independence’ movement. It is totally ‘unionist’, just not in union with Westminster but with Brussels.
Politically, it is poles apart from the so-called Ulster ‘Unionists’, the ‘English Nationalist Party’, Trump’s ‘Birtherism’, and the rest of the rag-bag of squalid, neo-fascist cults infesting the political landscape.
View discussion

Boris Johnson’s saboteur is back, and looking strangely familiar
17 Nov 2020 13:21
In response to AmoryC
Reactionaries were all in favour of the ‘Precautionary Principle’ when making war.
Shame they don’t believe in it when faced with the destruction of the ecosystem and civilisation.
View discussion

16/11/2020

If this were happening in Turkey, we’d call Trump’s actions an attempted coup1
6 Nov 2020 15:19
Whatever you call it, don’t use the term ‘Redneck Revolution’ on Twitter.
Apparently it will make people go on a murderous rampage. And it will get your account blocked (pending appeal).
You have to be nice to neo-fascists, nomatter how much they blatantly threaten the safety of others in Tweets that seem to be perfectly acceptable.
View discussion

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede is no joke – it’s a dangerous precedent
16 Nov 2020 14:22
In response to OlivesNightie
The unregulated media delivered Brexit and the Johnson government. Which is why the Free-Market Cultists are terrified of the BBC and would abolish it and OfCom.
No Leveson 2 – no political balance.
No political balance – no Truth.
No Truth – no democracy.
View discussion

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede is no joke – it’s a dangerous precedent
16 Nov 2020 14:17
In response to AhBrightWings
I would have had him play safe and allow the votes to be counted to their inevitable conclusion, thereby cornering Trump into demanding that the votes he didn’t like were binned and putting him on the back foot. He would then have no claims to ‘defending democracy’.
Letting Fox decide the result was very naive, as can be seen by the fact that it is now enthusiastically pushing the Trump line.
Incredibly, Biden fell in the trap of assuming that Trump would follow the long-held conventions, and concede before the count was complete.
View discussion

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede is no joke – it’s a dangerous precedent
16 Nov 2020 11:55
Biden’s mistake was to fall in the trap set by Fox when they ‘called’ the result, and to assume that Trumpists can do simple arithmetic. They do not deal in ‘projections’ (see climate science denialism.)
By doing so he opened the door to allegations of collusion with the meejah to pervert democracy..
The sensible strategy wold have been to simply keep insisting that every legal vote be counted, as in his first speech after the Fox Scoop. View discussion

13/11/2020

So goodbye, Barnard Castle Spice. Looking forward to your solo material
13 Nov 2020 17:15 
At least Dominic Cummings will be forever recorded on the same page of history as his fellow psychopath, Peter Sutcliffe.
The argument will be who was responsible for the most deaths. The Whitehall or Yorkshire Ripper. View discussion

Little Richardjohn
@Lil_Richardjohn @michaelwhite
Mein Kampf was dictated, if I remember. Trump will rope in some brainless bimbo stenographer to ghost his Grand Redneck Revolutionary Manifesto.
Nov 13, 2020, 5:08 PM TWITTER ACCOUNT BLOCKED. APPEAL PENDING.

12/11/2020

The 2010 student protests were vilified – but their warnings of austerity Britain were proved right
12 Nov 2020 15:04 
In response to AJVC1991
The British Healthcare system was conspicuously sidetracked in the fight against Covid. Unlike in Germany.
As usual, and underfunded NHS was dumped on to clear up the mess of tory political dogma, don’t blame it for the bungling incompetence of Johnson’s backstairs billionaire bung-merchants.
View discussion

10/11/2020

The Covid-carrying Danish mink are a warning sign – but is anyone heeding it?
10 Nov 2020 13:33
Precisely.
The so-called ‘Pandemic Age’ is with us.
And we created it with every burger we eat.
Just as we are the cause of global warming, which will require the same radical economic remedies to put right. View discussion

09/11/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @MetroUK
Until the next man-made zootic pathogen comes along. There are more in the pipeline, as long as we keep destroying forests and rearing animals in their own filth. Radical social remedies required. Like the end of Consumerism

‘What Is Disease X?There are between 631,000 and 827,000 unknown viruses on this planet with the potential to infect humans. Any one of them could cause the next pandemic.’ ecohealthalliance.org
3:18 PM · Nov 9, 2020·    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @wmarybeard and @TomCalvard
What happens next? A ‘Nero Decree’ of course. The destruction of all assets useful to the victors. ‘Better an End with Horror than a Horror without End’ as another Bunker-Dweller put it. https://panarchy.org/orwell/meinkampf.html…
12:07 PM · Nov 9, 2020    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Telegraph
A great achievement! 240.000 deaths and counting. Approaching the total number killed in all America’s wars since 1916, excluding WW2. And projected to soon exceed all the overseas war deaths .
https://statista.com/statistics/265977/us-wars-number-of-casualties/…
11:24 AM · Nov 9, 2020·

06/11/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @tibor201cm and @GretaThunberg
If we destroy the environment, as we are doing, there will be nothing for anyone to worry about except where the next rat or nut or berry comes from. And how to avoid the marauding tribes of armed bandits.
4:10 PM · Nov 6, 2020·  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @gazfitzgaz and @theJeremyVine
The BBC has been far ahead of the gutter profit-media in insisting on some evidence for deranged claims like Trump’s. The ‘MSM’ as you call them, are just catching up with their duties to the Truth. The toxic lynch-mob rabble-rousing stops NOW.
3:40 PM · Nov 6, 2020·Twitter Web App _________________________________    

What to do when your president has a temper tantrum
6 Nov 2020 14:41
Trump has finally lied himself into a corner.
His success so far has been built on absurd denials of evidence. (‘Fake-ism’)
Now he is forced to deal in facts and produce evidence. And can’t.
This will not deter his sick mind from creating as much damage as it can in the next two months before he faces prison- or deter his deranged disciples from running amok, with the crazed Steve Bannon as their axe-waver.
The task of Progressive forces is to ensure they represent the voice of reason. Or America is on the slippery slope to mayhem.
View discussion

01/11/2020

Johnson’s dithering has doubled this lockdown. We will all pay the price1 Nov 2020 17:58 In response to YetAnotherGerman

He tried one option. Namely bunging his mates £15B to cobble a solution together.
He totally ignored the rational option of using local health authorities, elected local government, and the extensive range of bio-labs in universities and hospitals which could have been mobilised, as they have been in Germany and other, safer countries.
To have done so would have forged a bond of activism and mutual benefit, and reinforced community values.
And that would never do. People would start demanding the same kind of rewards they did in 1945. And so they must be seen as the problem, not the solution. To be herded into safety by tory Whitehall Wonks.
Covid 19 is a huge opportunity for the Cummings/Johnson Cult and its doctrine of total alienation. A Crisis to be exploited.
View discussion

Johnson’s dithering has doubled this lockdown. We will all pay the price
1 Nov 2020 17:43
The ‘Unseen Hand’ of the market is merely the invisible fist punching us in the face.
View discussion

30/10/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
A protest with serious guts. The only way to get things done.
“US unions have begun discussing the idea of a general strike if Donald Trump refuses to accept an election result showing a Joe Biden victory.  
Union federations in Rochester, Seattle and Massachusetts approved resolutions should Trump seek to subvert election outcome.”
theguardian.com
4:33 PM · Oct 30, 2020

Behold Trump’s pre-election secret weapon: Nigel Farage, ‘king of Europe’
30 Oct 2020 16:04
In response to discreto
Farage is there to make Trump look big and Europe look puny.
Farage is the Quisling of the forthcoming trade war.
View discussion28/10/2020

Understanding ‘aerosol transmission’ could be key to controlling coronavirus
28 Oct 2020 10:51

Emphasising that Covid-19 can be spread through the air would allow us to add more weapons in our arsenal to fight this virus – which may be with us for some time to come.

Since any vaccine will be useless against the next inevitable Consumerist-generated Pandemic in a few years, all we have left is barrier methods for protection.
Until we stop destroying the environment to produce disease-ridden meat, we are merely commanding the tide to turn. The vaccine arms race against nature will be as socially destructive as every other unwinnable war.
View discussion

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @GeorgeMonbiot and @DoubleDownNews
Sir David King on BBC news today is the latest of a long line of scientists deriding No10’s billionaire-backhander T&T system. All ‘unbalanced’ due to ‘unavailability’. What more do you want? @dannydyer04  calling for the overthrow of the ‘Public school club’? See BBC news today.
10:26 AM · Oct 28, 2020·

26/10/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @LBC and @NickFerrariLBC
Another massive, deadly failure of the ‘Unseen Hand of the Markets’. But Johnson will never learn. If the medicine nearly kills the patient – double the dose. Who cares? The election is years away. 9:16 PM · Oct 26, 2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Lil_Richardjohn @BangoBilly and @WalesOnline
‘Herd Immunity’ the Block&Run maniacs claim. Desperate Mumbo-Jumbo. We don’t even have ‘herd immunity’ for Measles. Here’s Why Herd Immunity Won’t Save Us From The COVID-19 Pandemic It’s a terrible idea.  sciencealert.com
12:04 PM · Oct 26, 2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @BangoBilly @DeiniolCarterand @WalesOnline

If you’re infected, you’re contagious. End of Consumerist delusion. Consumerism creates Pandemics, and has to pay for this one. Then be replaced by something more sustainable. Whatever its Witchdoctors and Grand Viziers say. Zoonosis emergence linked to agricultural intensification and environmental change A systematic review was conducted by a multidisciplinary team to analyze qualitatively best available scientific evidence on the effect of agricultural intensification and environmental changes on… ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
11:52 AM · Oct 26, 2020·Twitter Web App

25/10/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
WRONG!! The Megamarkets drove too many small family firms on the rocks last time, turning a crisis into a Monopoly to peddle useless Junk. While cramming their stores with infectious Junk-Addicts. No wonder the High Street economy has crashed and the Virus is winning.   ‘Mark Drakeford reviewing Wales’ non-essential sale ban in supermarkets.’
https://mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-mark-drakeford-reviewing-wales-22901178…

Image

10:13 AM · Oct 25, 2020·Twitter Web App

14/10/2020

A ‘circuit breaker’ in England will work only if test and trace is urgently reformed
14 Oct 2020 16:26
The public have been treated as the Problem, not the Solution.
If the same contempt had been shown 1939-45 the results would have been catastrophic.
The reason for this contempt is the fear that 39-45 style solidarity would demand the same payoff in terms of improved public services.
And the Cummings Cult can never go down that slippery slope to civilisation.
View discussion

09/10/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @RebekkahPorter and @cnnbrk 
“This is not a militia. These are domestic terrorists.” Very true. But more precisely, they are psychopaths, like all murderers. People who have lost all sense of human empathy.
USA culture does not encourage Empathy. It actively encourages psychopaths, especially in the boardroom.
2:49 PM · Oct 9, 2020·Twitter Web App

07/10/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @ShawrtzJ and @HuffPostPol
Deluded (or hopefully misinformed) GARBAGE. ‘More people have died from Covid-19 than in the past 5 flu seasons combined.’ It will ‘close down’ civilisation as tightly as Global Warming because they both have the same cause. Toxic Consumerism. Coronavirus isn’t just deadlier than the flu — it’s also more contagious. These illustrations show why. edition.cnn.com  
5:34 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @Note_to_CMO and @MazMHussain
You can’t expect people who have spent years ranting about how Islamic face-coverings are anti-social to now accept that what they label ‘Sharia Law’ is now vitally important to saving lives and preserving society. It turns their stomachs.  
5:26 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @michaelwhite 
‘ 6. A lobbying firm run by allies of Dominic Cummings was handed a contract worth £900,000 to conduct public opinion polling on the coronavirus pandemic. @LeftFootFwd Left Foot Forward’s roundup of the progressive news you might have missed this week. leftfootforward.org   4:38 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn  @jayrayner1
Why can’t restaurants operate like theatres?
Book and pay online via Wegottickets (or whatever).
Order from online menu – like a takeaway.
Arrive at designated time, meal is ready to eat.
Don’t arrive. Lose your money.
It’s actually a better system than before The Event.  
4:26 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn 9.
Right-wing ideology can reduce the positive effects of education on climate change understanding in economically developed countries, a study in the Nature Climate Change journal has found. https://nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00930-6?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20201006&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter…
4:10 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @JohnCleese
” it makes a huge contribution to the mental well being of our nation.” Doesn’t that make music a prime target for the barbarians who now run our so-called society?
Everything else that makes a similar contribution is in their sights.
4:05 PM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn   @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @JohnDBell1985 and @LBC
Not ‘everyone’. That is another patent LIE. Mostly the bloated billionaires who are busily destroying the ecosystem, Truth & civilisation. Not that trivialities like that matter to your barbarian tribe. You wouldn’t know Truth if you caught Covid19 after exposing yourself to it. 10:13 AM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @shawnwatson5 @LBC and @NickFerrariLBC
Not far off. With its theory of ‘evil spirits’, Catholic theology tends to blame the unconfirmed child for the sexual attraction felt by the perverted priest. The priest then justifies his actions as saving the Soul of the child. Sins which can be erased in the Confessional. 10:08 AM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to  @LBC and @NickFerrariLBC
What CAUSES child abuse?
Nobody seems interested in WHY
It is clearly a biproduct of our power-structure, where the Losers take out resentment on the vulnerable.
In Catholicism unconfirmed children are potential vectors for ‘evil spirits’. Abusive Priests are ‘saving their souls’
10:03 AM · Oct 7, 2020·Twitter Web App

The biggest threat to the BBC’s independence is the corporation itself
7 Oct 2020 11:01In response to dylanthermos

They have become a lazy government mouthpiece.

And yet you can’t quote a single piece of credible evidence for that crazed allegation. You have clearly been indoctrinated at the Murdoch Madrassar.
And have never watched the BBC in your life.
View discussion

The biggest threat to the BBC’s independence is the corporation itself
7 Oct 2020 10:58 In response to mcpwilk
Like all who value Truth, it lies with the media unshackled by Advertisers.
The Piper who calls his own tune.
Unlike the Mail, which is funded by the property market, and therefore can never contradict or challenge the toxic fetish it peddles.
View discussion

The biggest threat to the BBC’s independence is the corporation itself
7 Oct 2020 10:54 In response to Therebedragons
If Dacre ends up running OFCOM, he will need a law to change its purpose.
Or he would have to destroy it completely.
More likely he would end up as an office boy, dancing to the tune of the regulations.
This he will not do. So will not take the job.
Of course the BBC can be perverted and undermined by an authoritarian regime with the help of the barbarian media and members of the intellectual purist elite like Monbiot. But that is not the BBC’s fault.
In fact, BBC news does more to distribute factual information than the more right-on Channel 4, which repels those who need convincing, and preaches only to the converted.
View discussion

The biggest threat to the BBC’s independence is the corporation itself
7 Oct 2020 10:35 In response to tony2014
Monbiot and his intellectual nitpicking elite would rather trash the BBC for failings which are caused by external political pressures than assert its continuing contribution to maintaining some concept of Truth above the mire of profit-based lies spewed by Murdoch & Co.
Like the shrinking violets who couldn’t hold their noses and vote for Clinton, letting Trump ruin America.
View discussion

The biggest threat to the BBC’s independence is the corporation itself
7 Oct 2020 10:26
Mostly garbage.
Especially

Before the last election, the Andrew Marr Show became the Conservative party’s patsy.

The problem is not the collusion of the BBC with the gutter media. It is the fact the the BBC, is strictly regulated by OFCOM, whereas there is no comparable overseeing body to ensure balance in print.
If Leveson2 had been implemented instead of binned by the tories, Johnson would not be running the country into the ground, and Brexit would never have happened.
View discussion

06/10/2020

Boris Johnson’s speech shows that even Brexit is beyond his comfort zone
6 Oct 2020 19:39
‘Magically resolved’ by the Unseen Hand of the Market, which gives Johnson’s billionaire chums monopoly rights to a vaccine which the world needs. He actually brags about it.
If Tim Berners Lee had been as vice-ridden, there would now only be a few thousand broadband users in Britain.
View discussion

05/10/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Crooklar @46milliGuinea and @zarahsultana
Everything points that way. From expert testimony to natural Common Sense. Local Expertise knows best. Johnson was told to use it 6 months ago, but Cummings wouldn’t let him. Far better than cowboy outfits in it for the money. Johnson’s STALINISM has cost thousands of lives. 4:27 PM · Oct 5, 2020·Twitter Web App

Sunak must realise that job coaches are useless when there are no jobs to be had5 Oct 2020 16:08In response to wuddacudashuda
Sunak’s the one proposing the ‘destruction of British industry’ by shackling it to the needs of Dead Consumerism and the past, instead of the future requirements of a Humane Civilisation, which are beyond his imagination, even though the science is totally unequivocal.
You can’t get a out out of a pint pot.
(2nd Law of Thermodynamics.)
View discussion  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Hogswitch and @guardian It’s the difference this time between being smashed in the face by a brick or a by a custard pie. A HUGE difference. Your sophisticated apathy won Trump the last election. You want to win him this one too, presumably. Along with all the StPetersburg bots.
3:37 PM · Oct 5, 2020· Twitter Web App


Sunak must realise that job coaches are useless when there are no jobs to be had5 Oct 2020 15:22In response to SecondThoughts2
There has only been one valid idea on earth for decades.
Completely retool industry to combat Climate Change, and create a sustainable civilisation. This one isn’t.
Too big for capitalism to handle? Not as big as a World War, and we did 2 of those in 30 years.
View discussion

Sunak must realise that job coaches are useless when there are no jobs to be had5 Oct 2020 15:17
Sunak promises to create more largely useless obsolete jobs to replace the ones lost.
If he meant business, he would completely retool British industry to face the demands of Global warming.
He shows no sign of doing this, and therefore is only stoking up hyper-unemployment for the future. And losing the battle against man-made climate change at the same time.
He has not absorbed the golden rule of never to waste a good crisis. View discussion  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to  @iyad_elbaghdadi
All reactionary outbursts are desperate attempts to salvage a dead ‘Identity’ from scraps of an invented ‘glorious’ past.
So-called ‘right-wing thought’ is as contradiction in terms – being based entirely on fear, superstition & greed. Not on Reason and rational Cause & Effect. 11:53 AM · Oct 5, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @LenMcCluskey @tribunemagazine and 2 others
We are better off without jobs that further eco-cidal Consumerism, or feed off it. As Unions, you should be investigating RADICAL, sustainable alternatives to the current partnership with barbarism. As you should have done in the C19th over slavery & Empire.
11:50 AM · Oct 5, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @HackneyAbbott
Then we have to destroy Consumerism. The same Consumerism that is destroying the ecosystem and Civilisation with it.; No Surrender to or Appeasement of Barbarism. Churchill knew that.;   ‘Zoonosis emergence linked to agricultural intensification and environmental change A systematic review was conducted by a multidisciplinary team to analyze qualitatively best available scientific evidence on the effect of agricultural intensification and environmental changes on…’ ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
11:39 AM · Oct 5, 2020·Twitter Web App

02/10/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @xAmyShepx and @StiffCollars
Because, like all reactionaries in history, he is in hysterical chains to a fictional past in search of a replacement for his defunct and toxic Identity, which he knows is totally discredited by science but can’t admit. A flight from an intolerable future.
4:45 PM · Oct 2, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn  Replying to @StiffCollars and @Telegraph
What language are you trying to use? Answer the question.
Name ONE strike which evokes your sympathy for the workforce.
It’s always the clincher with disciples of Backwards politics like you. Who are going through the ultimate Identity Crisis. Whose ’empire’ is obviously crumbling.
3:37 PM · Oct 2, 2020·Twitter Web App

01/10/2020

It goes way beyond the BBC: the right’s target is liberalism itself
1 Oct 2020 14:41
‘Liberalism’?
What the hell is that?
By destroying the BBC, the barbarians’ target is Truth itself.
They intend to reduce it to a market commodity, with each outlet having its own ‘brand’, as befits the demands of their sponsors.
The triumph of Consumerist Truth over the real thing. Just as Hitler and Stalin sought to impose their perverted science on the world.
View discussion  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @JimMFelton and @brexit_sham
The ‘Bad Faith’ mantra presumes the ownership of a Time Machine. ‘Bad-Faith’ can only be apparent after the event. Like signing an agreement then tearing it up.
Brexitist tactics are the same as Bush’s ‘pre-emptive’ action on Iraq. Dick Cheney’s ‘Unknown Knowns’.
3:09 PM · Oct 1, 2020·  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @DerekTighe1 and @mikegalsworthy
Why the USA is a shanty town. “Americans spend over $10K each/yr on healthcare, ..far more than in any developed country. The results for the rich are good, .. But for most people, not so much, ..life expectancy just fell for the third year in a row.”

Corona highlights US healthcare failure The US is the only developed nation without a guaranteed baseline of health insurance, and the virus may finally focus American minds on this absurdity. thriveglobal.com
1:56 PM · Oct 1, 2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Metia @MasterSallyTrin and 2 others
Sorry. But this is just another call for an arms race in a war we shouldn’t have started in the first place and can never win. As numerous studies have shown, zootic pathogens like Covid are OUR responsibility. Caused by OUR devastation of the ecosystem and toxic food industries.
11:31 AM · Oct 1, 2020·  

30/09/2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Kou11a @LBC and @SimonMarksFSN
When was he ‘anti-Trump’? Or has the concept of Evidence been completely erased from your operating system?
They will know, because they have all your information. Down to your breakfast.
Big Brother is Watching YOU.

Revealed: Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 20163.5 million Black Americans were profiled and categorised as ‘Deterrence’ by Trump campaign – voters they wanted to stay home on election daychannel4.com
4:18 PM · Sep 30, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Telegraph
You have a problem with that? It’s no different from putting any other Nazi boot-boys on standby. Ready to be unleashed on presidential whim against any Undesirables.
A blatant incitement to mob violence. And endorsed by the Telegraph, apparently.
12:30 PM · Sep 30, 2020·Twitter Web App


  Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @brianmoore666 The key question was missing:
“Mr President, you are clear you would reject any result you do not like, but will you even allow me to STAND for office? Or will you sign an executive order to prevent me? As you recently threatened to?
“Trump Threatens To Issue Executive Order Preventing Biden From Being Elected President”He is the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics.” forbes.com
9:30 AM · Sep 30, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @brianmoore666
He did nothing to ‘Deter’ black voters from voting, as he did last time. And nothing to Persuade the sane he wasn’t insane. He merely lived up to the delusions of his disciples.
He lost. Republican bigwigs are furious.  

Revealed: Trump campaign strategy to deter millions of Black Americans from voting in 20163.5 million Black Americans were profiled and categorised as ‘Deterrence’ by Trump campaign – voters they wanted to stay home on election day
channel4.com
9:26 AM · Sep 30, 2020·Twitter Web App

29/09/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @Telegraph
“Mr President, will you allow me to stand for office, or will you sign an executive order to prevent me from doing so? As you recently threatened to.”Trump Threatens To Issue Executive Order Preventing Biden From Being Elected President “He is the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics.” forbes.com 3:08 PM · Sep 29, 2020·Twitter Web App

28/09/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @xr_cambridge
Dai Gorillas may be the supreme nature film maker, but he is no politician or economist. He still does not quite grasp that it is impossible to be an environmentalist and a support any conceivable form of capitalism.
3:00 PM · Sep 29, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @MetroUK
How can he rest easy when nobody seems interested in finding out the Cause of psychopathic homicide and child abuse?
The only interest is in fantasising about extreme levels of punishment. Which is also ‘sick’.
2:50 PM · Sep 29, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @nmsonline and @HKesvani
Absolutely not That’s a total abuse of a noble word which we need now more than ever. ‘Radicals’ address the ‘root’ of problems. They are by definition tied to rational Cause & Effect.
You mean Fanatics. ‘Fanaticised’ by superstition & power-worship. Destroying words is not clever 4:27 PM · Sep 28, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @BillyMc1987 and @J_Bloodworth
What antisemitism is this? Names some names and quote some quotes. Your entire catalogue of HARD Evidence, if you like. (As opposed to rumour, gossip, ‘memes’, ‘tropes’ and any guilt by association by association twice removed.)
11:03 AM · Sep 28, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @DonaldJTrumpJr
If Fred Trump’s legacy had been invested prudently in government bonds, his loathsome, incompetent, half-wit gangster son would now be rich, and not a near-bankrupt. And the citizens of Jersey City would not now curse the name of Trump.
10:53 AM · Sep 28, 2020·Twitter Web App  

27/09/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Thegingertom1 and @mcash
Capitalism is merely an out of control spoilt hooligan brat which socialism constantly has to clear up after, & pay the compensation bills 200 years ago it had a purpose in Human history – to kill off the Divine Right of Kings Now it is just a global toxin. The ultimate terrorist
9:16 PM · Sep 27, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @tattyjacket and @GeorgeMonbiot Really? Explain the difference between your ‘left’ and ‘right’ hands. The terms are as useful in politics as the terms ‘up’ and ‘down’ are in outer space. They are the ultimate fog-words which prevent clarity of thought when it is most essential.

9:02 PM · Sep 27, 2020· Twitter Web App

Why is the nationalist right hallucinating a ‘communist enemy’?
26 Sep 2020 11:21 In response to Trax84
Lazy garbage. There is no symmetry to the political spectrum.
Your addiction to the narcotic terms ‘left and ‘right’ is just another way to stop you thinking.
If you dealt in real words which attributed some concrete values to political ends of the spectrum instead of hiding behind meaningless gibberish you would be forced to confront the realities of the crisis created by Consumerism.
The further ‘right’ the politics, the more intent it is on preserving and promoting the competitive carbon-based death-economy of consumerism intent on destroying civilisation.
Or do you deny the entire science behind the truth? As reactionaries and barbarians are obliged to in order to preserve their doomed ‘Identity’.
When did ‘The Right’ ever support a strike by any workforce? The fact they haven’t simply means they are closet supporters of slavery.
The only significant defenders of progress and civilisation are the ‘sinister’, the ‘gauche’, those on God’s left hand doomed to perdition.
In spite of the millenia of primitive cultural bias against the ‘cack-handed’ Southpaws of politics, theirs is the only way forward.
View discussion

26/09/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @CollardXavier @BBCPolitics and @BBCWorld
Garbage. Covid19 is the latest of a series of pathogens created by consumerism. As man-made as Global; Warming, and by the same techniques of deforestation and factory farming. And requiring the same Radical politics to reverse.
5:02 PM · Sep 26, 2020·Twitter Web App

24/09/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @guardian
‘Competition’ from what? No other radio station can possibly compete with the BBC range because they are hamstrung by commercialism. Should the BBC censor ‘In Our Time’ until the jackals commission content to match? A very long wait. 8:28 PM · Sep 24, 2020·Twitter Web App    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Hitler4Congress @anitanderuh and @BernieSanders You have no idea what a ‘socialist’ is.
Who said this: “The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.”
7:58 PM · Sep 24, 2020·Twitter Web App

23/09/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @WarlordMaverick @pbffreeman and @RA_Sikdar
They can ‘describe’ themselves how they want. The Spanish Inquisition was not Christian, and neither Hitler nor Stalin were ‘socialists’. Anti-colonial movements are inherently patriotic, and only ‘nationalist’ by accident or perversion.
11:53 AM · Sep 23, 2020·Twitter Web App    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @brianmoore666
Sport is the third leg of civilisation, along with Art and Science. As a distinct art-form, it is probably the most HONEST dramatic experience invented. Rugby is the most ferocious expression of the human spirit, along with flamenco.
10:27 AM · Sep 23, 2020·Twitter Web App    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @brianmoore666
“talent can beat privilege”. Only when it is granted the ‘privilege’ of the freedom from malnutrition and disease. It’s no accident that the ‘Golden Age’ of Welsh rugby was reared by the welfare state. “fights anti-social behaviour”? Depends. The Krays were keen ‘sportsmen’. 10:18 AM · Sep 23, 2020·Twitter Web App

16/09/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn

Replying to Telegraph
So the UK now has a licence to smuggle adulterated US junkfood into the EU. A licence procured by illegal methods. Why would any country ever sign a contract with us again? And any who do sign will ‘factor in’ our unreliability – which will be expensive for us. Brexit is Madness.    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Orwell_Society US Military-Political language is now almost entirely Newspeak. Words used to conceal meaning. The Internet is no better. Infantile gibberish like ‘troll’, ‘meme’, ‘trope’, ‘woke’ and the rest kill brain-cells with every use.    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @CharlieBeckett  and @amywebb Why else would Trump make himself look like an Art-Deco bonnet-mascot? A gargoyle on the Chrysler Building. Or one of Albert Speer’s eagles. All related to Fascist Futurism.    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @thismorning and @afneil Word of the Day: ‘HERD-MENTALITY’
The way to make Covid19 disappear is to delude everyone into believing it doesn’t exist. Like the delusion that “It will get cold soon” “Herd-mentality” is the most powerful weapon in the tyrant’s arsenal.
Ask Josef Goebbels or the Pope or anyone.  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @cononeilluk Any signs of  @BupaUK in the last 6 months? No doubt they’re still caring for their Gout patients, but how have they Done Their Bit in the Covid19 war?   12:12 PM · Sep 16, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @CollyerHilda @BeastLeejenner1 and @theAliceRoberts One of the democratising effects of SM is universal access to Peer Review. A mechanism once reserved for the ‘profess-ional’ classes. Which potentially makes every post a voyage of self-discovery.
Now convince me that’s nonsense and I’ll be a better person. 12:07 PM · Sep 16, 2020·Twitter Web App

14/09/2020

Extinction: The Facts review – a heartbreaking warning from David Attenborough14 Sep 2020 12:51
Finally a report likely to reach a large audience of the link between Consumerist environmental sabotage and the increasing generation of Zootic pathogens like Covid 19.
We can no more go back to ‘normal’ than we can go back to burning coal.
‘Normal’ means turning the Amazon rainforest into burgers. And more Global Pandemics.
Is that really what those in power want? View discussion

Extinction: The Facts review – a heartbreaking warning from David Attenborough14 Sep 2020 12:46
I wish Attenborough would stop saying that he will be dead before we will see Global Sabotage is reversed. It undermines his whole case.
If it isn’t measurably reversed before he reaches 110, it will be too late.
And who would bet against Attenborough passing the Ton at a stroll?
View discussion  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @ProfBrianCox Being a historian means having to deal with an ever expanding universe of new facts and new interpretations of old ones. Information overload. At least Science is gradually reducing the number of questions it has to answer. 6:23 PM · Sep 14, 2020·Twitter Web App

22/08/2020

Nobody denies Johnson’s government is incompetent. But do enough voters care?22 Aug 2020 11:35
“Care“? Far from it. The Bojo-brained actually relish being abused, as the Bannon case indicates.
Here was man who stole from his supporters, and they loved it like self-flagellating Medieval monks. Throughout history, lost souls and servile power-worshippers have kissed the boots that kicked them.
“Care“? What kinda Commie Marxist Snowflake word is that anyway?
No good appealing to the better natures of Reactionaries. What little they had left has been completely perverted.
View discussion

21/08/2020

Yurt alert: how the holiday PM dodged the great British exams meltdown21 Aug 2020 18:44
In response to 112131966523
People like Johnson and Trump never regret the damage they have done. They simply blame everyone else and lash out with petulant scorched earth policies.
‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ was the motto of one famous bunker-dweller on his last legs.
View discussion

10/08/2020

Dive for cover – Boris Johnson is invoking ‘morality’ in his Covid policies
10 Aug 2020 17:09
‘Morality’ my arse.
Money makes morality. Along with Law and Ethics it is always just a means of preserving exisitng property values. There are no ‘Eternal Verities’.
As both Marx and Christ agree:
“Where your treasure is’ there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:21)
Which is why businessmen and bishops bless battleships. And why Johnson puts profit before lives.
View discussion

Dive for cover – Boris Johnson is invoking ‘morality’ in his Covid policies10 Aug 2020 17:03
The one blessing of Covid19 is that it forgot about the children.
At least that is one unthinkable horror we were spared. It was almost magical. Or like a John Wyndham novel upside-down.
Perhaps now we will value them a little more. And treat them a little less like cannon-fodder.
View discussion

06/08/2020

In tackling the global climate crisis, doom and optimism are both dangerous traps6 Aug 2020 21:01
In response to Procrast
What people want to do in 50 years or whenever is up to them?
When it’s definitely too late to do anything much but stock up the armoury and guard the bunker from Outsiders.
Generous of you.
View discussion

In tackling the global climate crisis, doom and optimism are both dangerous traps6 Aug 2020 17:51In response to Sassynach
Gesture politics.
Only a radical dismantling of Consumerism, real economic equality and global cooperation can hope to curb CO2 emissions.
No tory would ever countenance a world without billionaires.
View discussion

In tackling the global climate crisis, doom and optimism are both dangerous traps6 Aug 2020 17:48In response to wheresmehat
They are in fact the same problem.
The same Consumerism is the cause of both.
View discussion

In tackling the global climate crisis, doom and optimism are both dangerous traps6 Aug 2020 17:47In response to applemapple
It makes her True.
A concept almost impossible to convey in a world totally befogged in toxic consumer lies.
View discussion

In tackling the global climate crisis, doom and optimism are both dangerous traps6 Aug 2020 17:45In response to HarshRealm
Sorry that your Consumerist God is dead. Killed by the same science that killed the Christian orthodoxy in Darwin’s time.
It must be terrible to see your identity shredded before your eyes, but that is no excuse for a concerted attack on the Truth.
Your existential crisis is your problem.
The world has a much more important one to deal with.
View discussion

In tackling the global climate crisis, doom and optimism are both dangerous traps6 Aug 2020 17:41In response to onthefence“things get worse as a continuous process, not at abrupt cliff-edges.”
Garbage, the natural world is riddled with sudden explosions of activity when a process reaches a critical mass or stage.
Nature doesn’t grow gradually and gently like a stalagmite.
It jerks forwards suddenly and massively under accumulated pressure, like an earthquake.
Or the Cambrian Explosion.
View discussion

In tackling the global climate crisis, doom and optimism are both dangerous traps6 Aug 2020 17:33
In response to en2009
“too many people see the impending doom of ecological collapse as part of their identity.”

They need to deny it to bolster their identity.
How could they do anything else when the Consumerism their identity depends on is being undermined by every scientist alive?
‘You say it’s bad for me? Then I have to do it.’
Denialism is nothing but perverse vainglory chasing a lost cause.
View discussion

04/08/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @SadiqKhan
It’s the same story down through local health authorities – that know more about this work than anyone, to Tenants Associations who could have organised food deliveries and many other services. But that generates UNITY. And this government hates & intensely fears the Blitz Spirit 12:57 PM · Aug 4, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn. @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @AdefemiIbitayo and @guardian
Can’t say what it ‘wants’ but what it NEEDS is a massive reduction in production in order to reduce CO2 emissions. If Covid19 delivered a 3-day week and the end of absurd ‘Economic Growth’ it would be a blessing in disguise. Of course the billionaires would squeal. Fuck ’em. 12:43 PM · Aug 4, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @RhonddaBryant
‘Ancock’s Hokey-Cokey strategy is driving people crazy. It couldn’t undermine morale more if it was deliberate. So much for Johnson’s ‘Blitz Spirit’ It’s the last thing he wants. The last time it happened it created the Welfare State he is now demolishing. The ideal is confusion 12:35 PM · Aug 4, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @NewStatesman
True progress means that police become obsolete. Why steal when you have enough? And why harm if you don’t have to steal? It’s only complicated to those who want all the rations in the lifeboat. 12:21 PM · Aug 4, 2020·Twitter Web App View Tweet activity  

03/08/2020

This wave of anti-China feeling masks the west’s own Covid-19 failures
3 Aug 2020 13:19 Cooperation is tantamount to socialism, and therefore a fate worse than Ecological Disaster to the indoctrinated herd of Consumerism..

‘As Hitler said in his bunker when issuing the Nero Decree:
‘Better and end with Horror than a Horror without end.’~
Which is the Death-or-Glory motto of the prophets of Competition. A creed which was useful for a few thousand years to finally eradicate the Divine Rule of Kings. But is now the most obvious enemy of Civilisation ever encountered.
View discussion  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @michaelwhite
It seems generally the same thing that happened after the Wall Street Crash. Stronger barbarian leaders and weaker civilised ones. Would FDR have survived and functioned in a social media age? Obama didn’t 4:02 PM · Aug 3, 2020·Twitter Web App View Tweet activity

01/08/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Telegraph and @DouglasKMurray
How? Easy. Because the old Scottish truly Nationalist Party learned from its experience in the EU, and was converted into a pragmatic Unionist Party – just not in a union with newly nationalist England, and especially not against its will. 12:36 PM · Aug 1, 2020

31/07/2020

I find myself spiralling’: the crisis facing British music venues
31 Jul 2020 15:20 In response to operationjulie

You do realise that ‘those days’ means most of history that we know.
And that if they are ‘over’ it means a great deal more than merely mid-life retraining for a few temporarily stranded professionals.
It is an unimaginable end of a culture which has probably become genetic.
Something we have never had to do without before.
View discussion

‘They said they’d lost the tapes’: the surprise return of The Real McCoy
31 Jul 2020 09:20

News? You want news? Get your own news.
I want a baby. That is my news.
Little one. Brown.

What ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ tried to be.
And the last British TV appearance of Caribbean patois and the unique Jamaican sense of humour – which deserves a regular platform of its own.
A real gem which deserved to run and run.
View discussion

From Written Diary

Eid.
Celebration in the garden this morning.
Manchester and much of North now in new Lockdown. People totally confused by Hancock’s Cokey-Cokey Strategy.
If there are any hard instructions it’s fairly safe to say that most people not in isolation are breaking them every day.
The contentious Play-Cage is still permanently open, but not causing the old problems of late-night use.
The regular night users have comer back, but now seem to pack up at 9.
Last night they seemed to be pushing their luck, and I couldn’t resist a few clangs of a cowbell bell to see what happened. They instantly stopped. The time – when I checked – was 9pm exactly. I won’t interfere again.
But I will sort out a sign saying something like THANK YOU FOR BEING CONSIDERATE OF OTHERS.

30/07/2020

Obesity can’t be tackled until we address the trauma that causes it
30 Jul 2020 11:30
Roll over stress-fuelled, futile, rat-race Consumerism with its primitive cult of human sacrifice, and make way for the Rebirth of something more Human.
We’ve done it before.
View discussion  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @ExpertsinMoney
How much does it cost the NHS? What has it down during the Covid19 Crisis? How many BUPA beds were used? Given the great publicity opportunity of helping out, the absence of BUPA from news reports seems strange. 12:10 PM · Jul 30, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @meadwaj and @paulmasonnews
Until progressive politics looks up the word ‘strike’ in the dictionary, there will be no progress. While people are too indebted to act collectively, they will always be the slaves of Money. With no more real dignity than slaves in iron chains.
1:34 PM · Jul 30, 2020·Twitter Web App

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Telegraph
No wonder Johnson hasn’t mentioned it for weeks. It simply refused to go down to manageable levels. But. The Show Goes On. Over The Top. Your Country Needs YOU! 12:00 PM · Jul 30, 2020·
Twitter Web App

From Written Diary

Trump tweeting that he wants to postpone the election because he doesn’t trust postal voting will deliver him another term.
There is widespread informed agreement that he is crazy enough to stay even if he loses by a landslide.

29/07/2020

Why are bad political slogans so good? It’s the vacuity, stupid
29 Jul 2020 10:58
Why? Because they prevent thought.
Like much of the Nu-Speak creeping into everyday use.
View discussion

28/07/2020 Tuesday

28 Jul 2020 16:40 In response to JAS346

People prefer chocolate over broccoli

You naturally equate ‘people’ with children and babies.
Babies and children ‘prefer’ chocolate to broccoli. Naturally, they grow out of their distaste
Big Foods therefore have sacred duty to their shareholders to petrify everyone in infancy.
16 is the new 9. 21 is the new 16. And everything must be pink, shiny, and taste of strawberries.
View discussion

Britain’s obesity strategy ignores the science: dieting doesn’t work
28 Jul 2020 16:33
‘Everyone has a ‘diet’. Not everyone is obese.’
Not everyone who lives on Burgers’n’Coke is obese. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t one of the most toxic diets ever peddled to the workforce. The effect being politically-paralysing malnutrition by excess, rather than the traditional shortages.
Fat is the new Famine.
View discussion

We are entering an era of pandemics – it will end only when we protect the rainforest28 Jul 2020 11:52In response to kotbegemotuk
‘So there is some level of immunity and resistance in the population’
Irrelevant. They didn’t call it Nova Coronavirus for fun.
Do you know of anyone who is ‘Immune’ to it?
Again you are agreeing with an article you claim is wrong.
Weird.
View discussion

We are entering an era of pandemics – it will end only when we protect the rainforest
28 Jul 2020 11:46 In response to Aancol

‘That is just a wrong statement.’

In fact it is entirely accurate, and you go on (and on) to agree without even realising.
Now THAT’s ‘Denialism’.
‘Double-think’ someone once called it.
Don’t worry. You’re not alone.
View discussion

We are entering an era of pandemics – it will end only when we protect the rainforest
28 Jul 2020 11:41 
In response to ForeverWar 
Yes it is the easy thing to think.
Which means you should think harder. Much harder.
Nu-Age drivel is the refuge of brains too lazy to get off their arses.
View discussion

We are entering an era of pandemics – it will end only when we protect the rainforest28 Jul 2020 11:37
In response to anticorbynista 
Garbage. Another easily-peddled lazy misanthropic myth..
Population levels are levelling out due to human meddling – in the shape of education, medicine and economic aid.
Now we need more meddling to avoid the twin catastrophes of Climate Change and Biennial Pandemics.
View discussion

From Written

Another couple of dozen books added to the library. This time just found at the bottom of the stairs.
Mostly good quality educational force-fodder, and hardly read, with assorted bible stories thrown in.
Another two bags crammed with ultra-fanatical charismatic, great-redeemer fire&brimstone Neo-Christianist propaganda videos and cassette tapes. Enough to indoctrinate a small town and empty its pockets.
Either the family is moving out, or has lost its faith.
Either way the Education Course obviously didn’t work. If the Christian message had got across, the family would have donated the books to the library where they would be shared with the Neighbours they have been taught to Love.
It seems that all their church has done for them is isolate them from their immediate community, and insulate them in an elite which gains its primary sense of identity from its instilled sense of superiority. But that is probably the same for most organised religion.

_______________________________________________

Well that online meeting didn’t go to plan. Half way through, before Matters Arising, the Chair suddenly collapsed in a heap on-screen and we scrambled to call an ambulance and check her out.
The medics offered to take her to hospital but she refused and went to sleep instead.
Lockdown Activism Overload, would be the best description for it.

27/07/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @stevedawson17 and @michaelwhite
The proposition that Black & White lives matter Equally only ‘divides’ us into those who believe in the Truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence – but betrayed ever since – and the rest. Police are murdering people ‘on the ground’. What could be more ‘scary’ than that?
11:28 AM · Jul 27, 2020·Twitter Web App

26/07/2020

From Written Diary

Covid Dream from about 3 weeks into Lockdown. After the Thursday Night Front-liner applause had become a regular event.
At least I assume it was a dream. For days I assumed it was real.
Maybe that’s because it materialised in the shape of a TV Ad, which can make anything seem real.
It was another daytime plug for the latest addition to the Coin Collector’s Catalogue.
The Specially Minted Covid19 £5 Coin Salute to the NHS. Dedicated to our Gallant Corona-heroes. With colour NHS logo and image of key-workers in relief. All profits to NHS Covid19 Fund.
Did this happen? I’m told not.

25/07/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @smuttyprof and @Telegraph
All just lawyer’s bullshit words for psychopathic behaviour. If killing someone isn’t crazy and sick, what is? Money DOES drive people crazy. That’s what it’s FOR. To make us less human by hiding the consequences of our exploitation.
9:29 PM · Jul 25, 2020· Twitter Web App

24/07/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @RossPolitics and @patrickhadfield
The Truth is far scarcer and more needed than food. The lies of the smear-mongers have not only devalued Truth, but the language we use to deduce it. The word ‘racism’ is now almost worthless. And the real racists are delighted. Congratulations.
3:32 PM · Jul 24, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @ProfFeynman
That’s just a variation of the best way to use SM. Let its Peer Review system and the process of dialogue decide what you think. Don’t try to convince, try to think.
3:23 PM · Jul 24, 2020·Twitter Web App  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Telegraph
An overstuffed Strawman. Reduced to scrumping socialist policies he can never make work because he hates them.
Banning TV ads for Junkfood – who will compensate the Junk dealer put out of pocket? And why wouldn’t they sue for Restraint of Trade?
3:11 PM · Jul 24, 2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @RtHonRebel and @Telegraph
It is when the NHS has to pick up the tab. Would you approve of tobacco advertising on Children’s TV? How about your ‘right’ to drive a car un-belted? Or a motor-bike without a helmet? All teenagers think they are immortal. ‘Icarus Syndrome’ it’s called. Look it up.
1:32 PM · Jul 24, 2020·  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Telegraph
Who will bear the burden of the tax-cuts to compensate the Junkfood Corps for their loss? How will the Jackal TV stations survive without this toxic revenue? And why not a ban on the sexualised imagery which is everywhere and which perverts young minds for life? As in Sweden.
1:28 PM · Jul 24, 2020

19/07/2020

History need not repeat itself when we write the journal of our plague year
19 Jul 2020 13:09
In response to KitHill1964
Solidarity and adherence to innate Social Reciprocal Altruism are essential tenets of progressive socialism – to give the opposite of your reactionary backward creed a name.
Humanity divides into two tribes, the socialised and the barbarian.
At the moment the insular, retrograde, superstitious barbarians are doing everything they can to destroy the ecological foundations of civilisation.
Including fostering the conditions for more and better zootic pathogens to inflict more and deadlier pandemics.
The game is up. Reactionary capitalism has hit the buffers it was too stupid to anticipate.
“Zoonosis emergence linked to agricultural intensification and environmental change”
View discussion

History need not repeat itself when we write the journal of our plague year
19 Jul 2020 13:00 
In response to drosophila
We refuse to teach basic Thermodynamics in school.
Is it any wonder?
It totally undermines the Vanities of capitalism (and religion)at a stroke.
And you can’t have that.

18/07/2020

Masks are going to be mandatory – we need clear messaging now to ensure it happens
18 Jul 2020 10:52
Johnson’s resolute opposition to masks is yet more evidence that he intends to to fight Covid19 like the Battle of the Somme.
Far from being the Churchill of his wet-dreams, he is the mongrel whelp of the bungling homicidal Haig and Ffrench.

Masks are going to be mandatory – we need clear messaging now to ensure it happens
18 Jul 2020 10:41 In response to Asktherightquestion
I suppose that clinically they could be described as sociopaths.
More evidence that so-called ‘Right-Wing Thought’ is nothing but a social disease, and has no claim to be a rational system of coherent dialogue based on a foundation of Cause and Effect. People who instinctively deny science cannot believe in Causality, resulting in the flight to Magic Thinking across the backward-yearning end of the political spectrum – especially now when all its preconceptions are under threat from the reality of their own making.

Masks are going to be mandatory – we need clear messaging now to ensure it happens
18 Jul 2020 10:30
In response to Pinkie123
What is the difference between your ‘right’ hand and your ‘left’ hand?
Until you realise that these terms are as useful as ‘Up ‘ and ‘Down’ in outer space you will stay as politically disoriented as you are now.
And a continued menace to political progress and keeping barbarism in its box.
Try using language which means something. It might make you think.

Masks are going to be mandatory – we need clear messaging now to ensure it happens
18 Jul 2020 10:27
In response to Pinkie123
Coughing your guts out until you die is ‘reducing your Humanity’.
The fact you wish this end on countless thousands means you are the last person to have the right to use the word ‘Humanity’.
It is merely a useful rhetorical weapon to you.

Masks are going to be mandatory – we need clear messaging now to ensure it happens
18 Jul 2020 10:23 In response to JOHNNYHEMISPHERE
The science was clear in March.
Barrier methods hinder distribution of pathogens. They always have and always will.
The only pettifogging pedantry was over the degree of protection for the wearer, which is totally irrelevant, selfish – and thereby counter-productive.
If nobody pumps the virus into the air we are ALL safer.
End of fake argument.

Masks are going to be mandatory – we need clear messaging now to ensure it happens
18 Jul 2020 10:0
The ‘message’ of masking is simple.
‘I DON’T KNOW IF I’M INFECTIOUS AND DON’T WANT TO INFECT YOU.’
Who could possibly object to that?

15/07/2020

I’m one of the freelancers who makes British theatre happen. Who will secure our future?
15 Jul 2020 13:41
In response to FoxedFox
All ‘fallacies’ are ‘pointless’ I think you’ll find.
View discussionI

‘m one of the freelancers who makes British theatre happen. Who will secure our future?
15 Jul 2020 13:39
In response to MarkWE
What causes most cancers, do you think?
What drives the constant arms race to track down a ‘cure’?
Not the theatre, but the burger-munching, profit-crazed wasteland which hates it.
A world with more art and less greed would hardly know cancer.
View discussion

I’m one of the freelancers who makes British theatre happen. Who will secure our future?
15 Jul 2020 10:59
In response to Activetense
How long do you think Shakespeare’s plays would have endured if his generation hadn’t also invented the permanent theatre to present them?
If all they had to sustain them were a ragbag of Toff-houses, pub-yards and church-halls?
View discussion

I’m one of the freelancers who makes British theatre happen. Who will secure our future?
15 Jul 2020 10:50
The argument that theatre is disposable during a shortage of cancer beds is hardly one a civilised society would endorse, amounting to nothing more than Goering’s ‘Guns or Butter?’
The motto of a society that means it is ‘Bread and Roses’.
View discussion

The only real question about face masks is: what took England so long?
15 Jul 2020 10:36
The dithering was through terror of creating a collective culture of involvement. Of letting the genii of solidarity out of the bottle.
The power-cult now in office will do anything to stifle any sense of community.
The more we can be treated as the problem rather than part of the solution the better. At each stage of this war, the power to fight it was handed over to private contractors for huge bundles of cash – to no effect except the extra death-toll.
View discussion

14/07/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @GeorgeMonbiot
Rabid individualism is under threat by so many factors of its own making that reactionaries are reacting like cornered wild animals. Happy to be stampeded over a cliff as long as they feel they are moving and alive. For as long as their fragile ‘identity’ can be kept intact. 6:01 PM · Jul 14, 202  

13/07/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @SIongram and @guardian
What is so weird and infantile about British shoppers?
In fact, this will give people a sense they are finally Doing Their Bit for a change. Being part of the solution, not the problem – creating a sense of solidarity that Johnson cannot allow. Hence his anti-scientific dithering.
5:37 PM · Jul 14, 2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @guardian
Time they broke the habit. By cold-turkey if necessary. Naturally, this de-socialised, alienated generation have nothing but consumption to give their lives meaning. Very sad and all that.. But that is no excuse for spreading a deadly disease to others.
5:31 PM · Jul 14, 2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @LBC and  @mrjamesob
And racists. All racist and fascists also voted for Brexit. At least, those able to read a ballot paper.
Name one that voted FOR continued international solidarity and consensual promotion of Human Rights. The idea is absurd.
12:12 PM · Jul 14, 2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @guardian
Then the NHS. Johnson’s cult hate anything which cannot be directly controlled by unaccountable, un-elected, tax-dodging, phone-tapping, price-fixing, profit-crazed corporations. Selling truth and health by the yard.
5:43 PM · Jul 13, 202    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @SteveF1ashville @LBC and @mrjamesob
A mask only has to protect ‘others’ to be invaluable – if people don’t WANT to infect others. Which they could do without knowing, or ever suffering symptoms. They should have been mandatory months ago. 60,000 lives ago.  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @JonquilLucy and @bbclaurak
Unifying the people in their own defence is far too dangerous for this lot. Undermining our common experience, and ignoring the communal ways of combating CV19 has been the trademark of this government’s reaction to the Pandemic.    

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn · Replying to @iko_s @LBC and @mrjamesob
The 1st excuse against [masks] is ‘enforcement’.
If Johnson stopped undermining the science, The People would do the enforcement. Those prepared to infect others would soon become pariahs. But that would be to give people a sense of their true role in a COMMUNITY. And that would never do.

05/07/2020

Our theatres face going dark for good, but don’t worry, there’s always the pub…
5 Jul 2020 10:52
Barbarisms don’t have much time for theatre.
Unless it’s the kind that offers human sacrifice, and gloating over the defeat of an enemy.
And the cultural trajectory of the last ten years has not been towards more civilisation. In fact, we don’t know whether we will be able to ever recover from our current level of Truth-Death.
Orwell didn’t think so.

04/07/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn Jul 4
As he launches Drunk-Distancing-Day, Johnson is obviously not aware of the effects of alcohol on the human brain.  

02/07/2020

Ernest Bevin: Labour’s Churchill by Andrew Adonis – review2 Jul 2020 10:41 
In response to Ecototte
Capitalism has a ‘common taproot’ with cannibalism.
So what?
Socialism is a long-known, intuitive, biological truth among Human beings – who are social animals.
Marx discovered exactly how capitalism works and changed our view of the world as surely as Christopher Columbus, showing how egalitarianism might be possible through the mass-realisation of the reality of exploitation.
It was not through a minority seizing power of a feudal, barely industrial, illiterate theocracy or banana republic in the crisis of losing a war. Which is all we’ve seen so far.

Ernest Bevin: Labour’s Churchill by Andrew Adonis – review
2 Jul 2020 10:30
In response to jno50
Desperate, pathetic stuff which would never stand up in court – like virtually all the allegations of Labour racism, which seem to relish the fact that they rest on no evidence.
Watching Labour eat itself alive in this frenzy of smart-alec 6th form semantics has been the most depressing political spectacle of the century.
When Maxine Peake’s crime of laziness, or libel at worst, is interpreted as racism, then nobody is safe.
Maybe it would be best if the British Board of Deputies simply provided a list of things we can say about Israel without being labelled a racist.
For instance. If we were talking about Britain, one thing not on the list would be our role in ‘perfecting’ waterboarding in Kenya and Northern Ireland – for the Americans to use in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
To spread anti-British smears like that debases the rightful owners of “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” And so nobody could say them again.
Lying is not racism.

Little Richardjohn. @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @Gary_P_Jackson and @PrivateEyeNews
What does that even mean? If the police massacre of black people without trial isn’t ‘political’, what is? It will certainly demand radical POLITICAL action to kill the racism caused by the inequalities your sick consumerism depends on. Which is why #BLM is intolerable to you.  

24/06/2020

The way Boris Johnson has eased lockdown sends all the wrong messages
24 Jun 2020 15:43
Add up the last three sets of guidelines you heard, multiply by the number of people in your Bubble, add a Goodly Pinch of good ol’ fashioned common sense – take away the number you first thought of and
Hey Presto! You’re safe!
Only an idiot could get it wrong.
So don’t blame the government when it goes wrong. They told you what to do.

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review
24 Jun 2020 15:38
In response to MontoyaFan
if you read the science you might understand it.
But I doubt it, since you were indoctrinated long ago that ecocidal Consumerism is Paradise.
To prove me wrong simply quote the science you claim you can refute.
There is no science batting for Consumerism. Scientists are all agreed that the laws of Thermodynamics are immutable. The Perpetual Motion Machine of neo-liberal economics is a magician’s fantasy. And all the science says its toxic fumes and anti-life food production methods are killing the ecosystem and spawning ever more zootic pathogens.
You’ll be defending chlorinated chicken next, then Borax in baby-milk.
You already deny man-made Global Warming I assume..

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review
24 Jun 2020 12:07 In response to MontoyaFan
Answer the science and the question
Your public evasion and denial ‘renders’ your posts pathological.
Quote the science you refute, and how. Like when you were in school.
Covid did need to happen to perpetuate the impossible demands of Junk-based global consumption. The same reason Global Warming ‘needs’ to happen.
Consumerism makes them both inevitable. Both were predicted, and both demand the same radical solutions.
Which is why science has to be demonised and ignored to the bitter end.

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review
24 Jun 2020 09:47 In response to MontoyaFan
Or would this need to be Denied from the rooftops more urgently?
“As Covid-19 joins the list of zoonotic diseases, the world has already seen millions of deaths in the past due to the consumption of and contact with animals. Starting with three pandemics that have emerged since 2000, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, swine flu (H1N1) in 2009 and now the disease Covid-19 caused by the virus Sars-CoV-2: evidence suggests the latter has come from animals, as did SARS which spread from civet cats and bats in China, whilst animal to human transmission of swine flu first took place in an intensive pig farm in Mexico.
Other than these, there have also been outbreaks of bird flu (avian influenza) from poultry, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) first transmitted from camels, Ebola from monkeys and pigs, Rift Valley fever from livestock, West Nile fever from birds, Zika from monkeys and Nipah from bats and pigs. The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, is widely thought to have originated from the consumption of bush meat.
Incidentally, avian influenza continues to mutate and wreak havoc in poultry farms around the world including in Germany, China, India and the UK, and an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) was reported in Poland recently.”
https://www.lifegate.com/factory-farming-epidemics-coronavirus

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review24 Jun 2020 09:42 In response to MontoyaFan
Why do you refuse to read the science?
I know exactly what it says.
Which specific part of it do you claim to be able to refute?
Is it this? (cover your eyes now.)

” RESULTS
In summary, the review found strong evidence that modern farming practices and intensified systems can be linked to disease emergence and amplification..
Expansion of agriculture promotes encroachment into wildlife habitats, leading to ecosystem changes and bringing humans and livestock into closer proximity to wildlife and vectors, and the sylvatic cycles of potential zoonotic pathogens. This greater intensity of interaction creates opportunities for spillover of previously unknown pathogens into livestock or humans and establishment of new transmission cycles.
Anthropogenic environmental changes arising from settlement and agriculture include habitat fragmentation, deforestation, and replacement of natural vegetation by crops. These modify wildlife population structure and migration and reduce biodiversity by creating environments that favor particular hosts, vectors, and/or pathogens.”:

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review23
Jun 2020 11:04
In response to MontoyaFan
Merely the Collateral Damage of Consumerism. And the Holy War of Eternal Growth.

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review23 Jun 2020 11:02
In response to MontoyaFan
It has everything to do with factory farming since we are turning the entire planet into one. We eat far more pigs and cows and chickens than bats.
Most Pandemics since the ‘Spanish’ Flu were caused by over-proximity of people to animals riddled with disease from factory conditions or other intensive human meddling. All in the name of Profit.
It’s another effect of the same disease of Consumerism which is destroying the atmosphere. And will need the same radical remedies to resist, and restore some degree of health to an ecosystem Money is determined to destroy.
Obviously this has to be Denied to preserve the sense of Identity of the Indoctrinated, but they deny all science. It is their squalid role in History.
Zoonosis emergence linked to agricultural intensification and environmental change

Factory farming conditions and antibiotic-resistant pathogens emerging as a result of them pose an existential threat to humans in the form of zoonotic diseases. Why it’s time to produce and consume food more thoughtfully.
etc. etc. etc. Deny away.

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review
24 Jun 2020 09:47 In response to MontoyaFan
Or would this need to be Denied from the rooftops more urgently?

“As Covid-19 joins the list of zoonotic diseases, the world has already seen millions of deaths in the past due to the consumption of and contact with animals. Starting with three pandemics that have emerged since 2000, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, swine flu (H1N1) in 2009 and now the disease Covid-19 caused by the virus Sars-CoV-2: evidence suggests the latter has come from animals, as did SARS which spread from civet cats and bats in China, whilst animal to human transmission of swine flu first took place in an intensive pig farm in Mexico.
Other than these, there have also been outbreaks of bird flu (avian influenza) from poultry, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) first transmitted from camels, Ebola from monkeys and pigs, Rift Valley fever from livestock, West Nile fever from birds, Zika from monkeys and Nipah from bats and pigs. The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, is widely thought to have originated from the consumption of bush meat.
Incidentally, avian influenza continues to mutate and wreak havoc in poultry farms around the world including in Germany, China, India and the UK, and an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) was reported in Poland recently.”
https://www.lifegate.com/factory-farming-epidemics-coronavirus

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review
24 Jun 2020 09:42 In response to MontoyaFan
Why do you refuse to read the science?
I know exactly what it says.
Which specific part of it do you claim to be able to refute?
Is it this? (cover your eyes now.)

” RESULTS
In summary, the review found strong evidence that modern farming practices and intensified systems can be linked to disease emergence and amplification..
Expansion of agriculture promotes encroachment into wildlife habitats, leading to ecosystem changes and bringing humans and livestock into closer proximity to wildlife and vectors, and the sylvatic cycles of potential zoonotic pathogens. This greater intensity of interaction creates opportunities for spillover of previously unknown pathogens into livestock or humans and establishment of new transmission cycles.
Anthropogenic environmental changes arising from settlement and agriculture include habitat fragmentation, deforestation, and replacement of natural vegetation by crops. These modify wildlife population structure and migration and reduce biodiversity by creating environments that favor particular hosts, vectors, and/or pathogens.”:

23/06/2020

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review 
23 Jun 2020 16:28 In response to MontoyaFan
It was predicted again and again by a horde of leading experts.
Most recently as ‘Disease X’ by the WHO.
And for hard scientific reasons related to our desecration of the planet
Nothing to do with crackpot conspiracy theories about how the Chinese want to destroy their largest market in order to boost their economy..??.??.?

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review 
23 Jun 2020 16:24 In response to MontoyaFan
Uselessly, for your information, Spanish Flu started on a chicken farm in the Good Ol’ US of A..
And Chinese wet markets are simply low-tech versions of what is happening in Mid-west stockyards now.
Why are you ‘inured’ to the science which any literate person can read and understand?
– Because you are brain-washed by Consumerism into the delusion that it is the only and perfect system of Human Civilisation, whereas in fact it is systemically determined to destroy it. Like the viruses it spawns, it can only reproduce by destroying its host.
Which part of the reports I posted did you disagree with most?

The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened –
review23 Jun 2020 11:02 
In response to MontoyaFan
It has everything to do with factory farming since we are turning the entire planet into one. We eat far more pigs and cows and chickens than bats.
Most Pandemics since the ‘Spanish’ Flu were caused by over-proximity of people to animals riddled with disease from factory conditions or other intensive human meddling. All in the name of Profit.
It’s another effect of the same disease of Consumerism which is destroying the atmosphere. And will need the same radical remedies to resist, and restore some degree of health to an ecosystem Money is determined to destroy.
Obviously this has to be Denied to preserve the sense of Identity of the Indoctrinated, but they deny all science. It is their squalid role in History.
Zoonosis emergence linked to agricultural intensification and environmental change
also
Factory farming conditions and antibiotic-resistant pathogens emerging as a result of them pose an existential threat to humans in the form of zoonotic diseases. Why it’s time to produce and consume food more thoughtfully.
etc. etc. etc. Deny away.

22/06/2020

More science for the Denialists to gnash their teeth at.
The Covid-19 Catastrophe; Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened – review
22 Jun 2020 20:21

Peter Daszak, a British ecologist who has collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and who, together with his Chinese colleague Shi Zhengli, warned in 2013 that a virus sequenced from a horseshoe bat from Yunnan province had pandemic potential. We now know that that virus shares 96% of its genes with Sars-CoV-2, making it a progenitor of Covid-19.

Daszak warns of more than that. He seems convinced that our habit of destroying ecosystems and rearing animals in factories will spawn endless mutations of zootic pathogens.
More science for the Denialists to gnash their teeth at.

From now on, we will divide history into before and after this pandemic
22 Jun 2020 14:45 In response to Still_Melty_Clock
New Religion?
An Existential Bi-Theism of two gods, one of the Past, and one of the Future.
A bit like Janus only separate, and now, un;like the ancients, we have a substantial body of Past to use, which is growing too fast for us to process – and colliding with a Future which looks like its getting shorter all the time.
The 1st commandment being:
‘Do Unto the Future as You would have the Past do Unto Now.’
The Spiritual directive being the relationship of the individual with the Thermodynamic Moment in Cosmic Entropy.

19/06/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @michaelwhite
We are reaching history overload. We are producing and discovering it exponentially. Too fast to process it properly. Which is a real barrier to creating the future we want.

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Jun 19
Not possible without class-consciousness. And the USA is an exercise in Class-denialism. All its problems start there.   Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn

Jun 19 Exactly. If every allegation of racism had to obey those civilised rules of justice, we would still have a Labour Party.   Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn

Whereas you revel in the trap of allowing the standards of the past to be actively promoted now. 
Patronage is not an excuse. It does not buy a place in History or Heaven, no more than it did when the medieval church sold advance bookings And look what happened to that institution.

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
By showing how the British economy depended on slavery, you just demonstrated the scale of the crime, and that of the vast reparations Britain therefore owes for its wholesale campaign of pillage and slaughter. A newspaper is not made of stone. That is your reactionary ideal.   @Lil_Richardjohn ·

You break the rules, you get kicked out of the club. That’s the LAW. She broke the rules she agreed to keep.  Why is it that reactionary barbarians hate rules? Stupid question.
Why does a leech suck blood?

09/06/2020

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn·
You would obviously undo the French Revolution because of the burning of the Bastille. And America – that tea was someone’s sacred PROPERTY! Just as the People in the Slavery you apologise for were the Property of Colston.
Aim your reactionary bile at Cummings The Covid-Spreader.  

Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn’t created in a lab
9 Jun 2020 12:32
In other words the same Consumerism that is destroying the ecosystem also spawns zootic pathogens .
And we have to use the same radical policies to counter both.

08/06/2020

The Colston memorial was lousy sculpture on all levels. ‘Now, it’s perfect’, as Marcel Duchamp would say. Mangled and defaced it is a powerful work of anti-slavery art and should be ‘recontextualised’ in a glass tank of dirty Avon water. It ‘has a story’ as they say on Bargain Hunt.
From an educational point of view, this act has drawn more attention to the obscenity of the slave trade than all the namby-pamby workshops, school-trips, and meetings with the local council. Now EVERYONE knows Colston’s crimes and what Bristol was built on.
When was that in the Daily Mail last?
If dumping this lump of scrap in the river is ‘censorship’, what is the act of burying the lives of so many remarkable British women in Library archives and press files?
Where are THEIR civic statues proclaiming their virtues, and how many million people did THEY kill for money?
The working classes, which are Britain’s greatest Philanthropists, have been largely censored from History; and in popular culture reduced to comic walk-ons and grotesques.
First things first.  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @JANUSZCZAK
The Colston memorial was lousy sculpture on all levels. ‘Now, it’s perfect’, as Marcel Duchamp would say. Mangled and defaced it is a powerful work of anti-slavery art and should be ‘recontextualised’ in a glass tank of dirty Avon water. What if it had been of Stalin or Hitler?  

04.06/2020  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
It is not a choice of one or the other. The right not to be murdered by those charged with protecting us is just as important as fighting the virus and government trying to kill us. Most protestors set the example of masking, which neither Trump nor Johnson ever do.  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Is this the 14th or 15th time this licensed thug ‘snapped’ on duty? I lost count. US civic society has to be purged of organised crime to drag its policing into the C20th. The US is not only systematically racist but systematically corrupt. A dying society.  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Most are wearing masks. And the government ‘advice’ is not clear about wearing them anyway. Police murders must be stopped. When do you suggest the anger is expressed? When the government says it’s OK?  

02/06/2020 Lockdown Day 70

Our cities only serve the wealthy. Coronavirus could change that
2 Jun 2020 14:52
Naturally, those most in denial of the scientific discoveries that pandemics and global warming are caused by the consumerist lifestyle are those most unwilling to renounce it.
They are presented with a choice between burgers or Life, and they choose burgers. The junkie will kill for a shot.
The most popular last meal in US death-cells is said to be a BigMac’n’Coke. If the Junk addicts get their way, it is likely to be civilisation’s too.

Our cities only serve the wealthy. Coronavirus could change that
2 Jun 2020 21:24
 In response to Luka89
And what do you think ‘cities are for’?
The same as before? Mega-hubs for peddling and producing and financing pointless Junk to poison the planet with?
Giant treadmills where Mortgage-slaves waste their lives making other people rich?
Is that your ‘reality‘?
Then I’m afraid you’re in touch with it.
But it won’t be there to touch for long.

Our cities only serve the wealthy. Coronavirus could change that2 Jun 2020 20:43 
In response to Bowskill83
It’s not just the trade in wild animals, it is the devastation of their habitats to grow livestock feed, mine fossil fuels, erect get-rich-quick construction projects and roads to nowhere – plus the Frankenstein methods used in factory farming.
Our entire economy, in fact.
BigMac’n’Coke.

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @BBCNewsnight
Trump had the flower of peace in this hand and crushed it like the Yahoo he is. He could end the violence instantly by demanding Justice for Police who kill. The logical conclusion is he does not want peace, he wants war against all his many opponents, and unlimited Power.  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @BBCNewsnight and @IlhanMN
The USA may be too racist to save. The patient is beyond healing, and should be quietly put to sleep somehow. I suppose mass-lobotomy is out of the question? Or – has it already been performed? That is the question.

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @localman @misszing and @zoemavroudi
You’re ‘not sure’ that every struggle for equality has been branded a ‘Commie Plot’? Or words to that effect. Check your history since the Chartists. Mandela, Ghandi, King, even Aneurin Bevan – bloodthirsty commies all, according to those in threatened by equality.  

01/06/2020

To prevent a chaotic end to lockdown, the public should be told the true risks
1 Jun 2020 20:34
We are told the odds of becoming infected are now 1,000 – 1.
The same odds we faced 70 days ago, and yet we are now returning to the same level of activity and social contact, with none of the required structures in place to prevent a return to the nightmare figures of a few weeks ago.
Someone is gambling with our lives.

To prevent a chaotic end to lockdown, the public should be told the true risks
1 Jun 2020 20:36 
In response to tempteressfortoolong
It’s metres, actually.
One good thing. People will finally find out what a metre looks like. Or two of them, anyway.
2 metres = 1 Covid.
Anything that humanises metric is not all bad.

29/05/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @RichardDawkins
Trump’s FATWHA against the Twitter Blasphemy is a reaction to being treated like anyone else. Like Cummings, he thinks he is above the law. And the Mini-Trump Johnson follows like the cringeing poodle he is by gagging the BBC. All in the name of ‘Free Speech’. Hello 1984.
11:16 AM · May 29, 2020·

28/05/2020

Rob Kenyon Twitter regularly deletes the accounts of serial liars.
Trump has got away with murder. He should have been deleted years ago. Twitter is ‘regulated’ already, but, like Cummings, Trump does not accept that regulations apply to members of the Elite.
Only to suckers like you.
And now, when Twitter does its duty to Truth and attached a health warning to his libellous ravings, he threatens to BAN it IN THE NAME OF FREE SPEECH. (!).
You Could Not Make It Up. Except that someone did. George Orwell was his pen-name. The book was called 1984.

 · 1m

“In the monologue Maitlis told viewers: “Dominic Cummings broke the rules – the country can see that and it’s shocked. The government cannot…

The longer ministers and the prime minister insist he worked within them, the more likely the angry response to the scandal is likely to be … He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools, and has allowed many more to assume they can flout them.”
Talking of Johnson’s “blind loyalty” in the face of plummeting poll ratings, she expressed bafflement: “The prime minister knows all this and has chosen to ignore it.””
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/27/bbc-switches-emily-maitlis-in-newsnight-episode-over-cummings-remarks?CMP=twt_gu&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium#Echobox=1590604091

27/05/2020

Why we shouldn’t be calling our healthcare workers ‘heroes’
27 May 2020 15:12
A hero is someone who carries on doing their duty in spite of the danger to themselves.
Someone whose protection we need and who save lives.
Reclaiming the word from those whose job it is to kill is a very good idea indeed.
It might not be too much to hope that another abused word, namely ‘radical’, will be restored to its rightful role in rebuilding a sustainable society to replace the one ravaged by the poisons of Consumerism.

26/05/2020

Little Richardjohn  @Lil_Richardjohn  Replying to @prodnose
The indomitable British Poodle-Spirit on show. Cummings would have advised King George VI to scurry off to Canada to protect his family from the Blitz. A stain on the British character. A Black Day. 11:16 AM · May 26, 2020  

Little Richardjohn  @Lil_Richardjohn  Replying to @zowie111 and @thetimes
No hindsight needed. The WHO predicted this in 2018. The trouble was that stopping it meant destroying Consumerism. And since money is more important than lives, the Virus won.  

‘What Is Disease X? There are between 631,000 and 827,000 unknown viruses on this planet with the potential to infect humans. Any one of them could cause the next pandemic.’
ecohealthalliance.org

11:55 AM · May 26, 2020·    @Lil_Richardjohn  
Replying to @Tazman_London and @campbellclaret
Stick to the point. Anyone who claims their 4 year old can go 260 motorway miles without a pit-stop is a LIAR. And any journalist who doesn’t ask him about it is an Amateur. A Rookie.   

 @Lil_Richardjohn  He merely tugged the heart-strings of those with no heart, and suckered the real suckers who would let him break laws they obey. A cynical display of lies and moral blackmail. His family were never under increased threat. Since he destroyed government credibility we all are.    

25/05/2020

UK coronavirus live: Dominic Cummings to give public statement at 4pm
25 May 2020 15:24
If acting instinctively “with Integrity” is legal, what chance Johnson’s forthcoming prosecutions of Local Authorities refusing to open schools next Monday?
If Johnson is so confident of his handling of Covid19, and determined to drag out his Bulldog-Spirit act, he should go to Hackney, the worst-hit area of London, the and look the East-End in the face.
His souvenir rubber Churchill-mask now just makes him look like a syphilitic WC Fields.
And underneath there’s just a leering teenage Playboy caught red-handed Mid-Prank.

20/05/2020

When should British schools reopen? Here’s what the science tells us
20 May 2020 09:51
In response to Rizidubawi46
As last night’s terrifying BBC Horizon showed, we do not yet know what the full long-term side-effects of Covid19 are.
Children may not suffer the same acute pulmonary symptoms as adults, but opening schools on that basis is highly irresponsible until there is some conclusive research.
A Global Gap Year would create a level playing field for all countries, be a great relief to everyone, and after all, such a freeze would be no more ‘costly’ than some world wars I could name.
The rational solution. Therefore, what are the chances?

When should British schools reopen? Here’s what the science tells us
20 May 2020 09:42
What does the science say about the kind of ‘education’ children have been subjected to for the last 20 years?
What does it show about the effects of targets, testing, and the rest of the production-line on levels of stress and despair in the young? On their emotional and intellectual development, and on their ability to grow as human beings?
Until Covid19 came along, the suicide-rate among the young was a regular space-filler. It will be interesting to see whether this has fallen in the last 7 weeks or not. And just what our education system actually means

19/20/20

We must not let the row over British schools descend into an identity war
19 May 2020 12:53
Religions are the pioneers of Identity Politics. They have been conspicuous by their absence during this crisis. And they also face a crisis of confidence over the power of prayer – which was meant to protect by drenching the believer in the Blood of Christ/Allah/Jehovah.
Those organising food deliveries and mutual aid groups are largely the despised riffraff of bike-riding sandal-wearing etc etc. people who believe in unconditional help.
The so-called ‘Christians’ have completely disappeared. I could regularly expect weekly visits from some interfering gang demanding ownership of my Soul. None off them have been back to ask if I have enough to eat.
Every cloud.

We must not let the row over British schools descend into an identity war
19 May 2020 11:15
Sorry. Cart before the horse as usual. In case you hadn’t noticed, Britain has been torn by a bitter Identity War for many years. Which has continually attacked British schools and degraded education into a production line for obedient drones  

18/05/2020

After the war, the arts came back stronger. They can do so again now
18 May 2020 12:54
Nice try, and thanks for the effort, but many small theatrical companies are inconsolable.
After 30 years of touring all over Britain, showcasing world class artists in theatres other (subsidised) companies cannot reach, we are totally paralysed.
Firstly. The art itself is utterly dependent for its survival on a close relationship with its audience. It began in the community and is unthinkable without continual input from that culture and its audience. In Lockdown, it is a bird in a bell-jar.
Secondly, the art is not only dependent on international travel, but was spawned by it, centuries ago. And practical touring budgets in Britain cannot afford 2 weeks of per-diems for Quarantine.
True, some of the regular premier Festivals are scheduled to take place behind closed doors. But that is not a sustainable future for any dramatic art.

After the war, the arts came back stronger. They can do so again now
18 May 2020 12:37
Only this is not so much a war as an ideal totalitarian dictatorship, as far as the arts are concerned. An enervating isolation from the everyday experience which fuels creativity and is therefore fatal to the arts. Except possibly the more mystical end of the spectrum. But narrative writing or performances are tripods with two legs.
The myth of the free mind secretly expressing itself in the midst of total suppression is belied by the conspicuous lack of serious art to emerge from the ruins of Hitler and Stalin. And the profusion instead now of globally co-ordinated fitness-freakery, directed by brainless conformists.

17/05/2020

Normal’ life failed us. The coronavirus crisis gives us the chance to rethink a new economy
17 May 2020 15:40
The notion that “in a few months things will be more or less back to normal – that in the end people just want to “get back to their jobs,” is pure Pie in the Sky. As Consumerism always was.
What those addicted to our ecocidal lifestyle cannot grasp is that Covid19 is merely the latest of a long list of Pandemics spawned by our collective need to reduce the planet to ashes and churn out ever cheaper Junkfood to keep the population too malnourished to think.
A terrible habitat for organic life, but a perfect breeding ground for Zootic pathogens to mutate and cross species.
The reality about to dawn is that the party is over. And that only radical cooperative effort can begin to rescue civilisation.
The causes are as clear as those of Global Warming because they are the same. As are the solutions we must adopt. Which is why the same people deny the causes of both.

13/05/2020

Epidemics and Society by Frank M Snowden review – illuminating and persuasive
13 May 2020 10:31In response to zibibbo
Someday the nursery-school truth will dawn that a Quart will not go into a Pint pot.
Also known as the Laws of Thermodynamics which rule the universe and ban the Perpetual Motion Machine.
But by then it will be too late.

11/05/2020

We can’t restart Britain’s economy until we get coronavirus under control
11 May 2020 14:21
And we can’t get Covid 19 and its successors under control until we stop generating them by our toxic animal husbandry techniques, and devastation of the ecosystem for profit.
This demands a radical debunking of the Junk Economy and its absurd Utopian myths.
There is as much scientific consensus that ecocidal economics spawn zootic pathogens like Covid19 as there is that CO2 emissions cause global warming. The two disasters are directly linked to Deathbed Consumerism, and will demand the same shift from systemic competition to system cooperation to enable any sort of sustainable civilisation.

Boris Johnson’s coronavirus ‘roadmap’ will only sow confusion
11 May 2020 14:10
All volunteers for the experiment to find how capitalism can be kick-started as soon as possible, please sign here. (don’t bother to read the smallprint – trust us)
Refusal to work may result in loss of benefits and rights.

10/05/2020

Epidemics and Society by Frank M Snowden review – illuminating and persuasive
10 May 2020 10:21
Plagues always play havoc with two things; organised Superstition and the labour market.
The boffins now merrily planning for the ‘New Normal’ haven’t yet ‘factored in’ these well-documented shifts in class-consciousness and self-esteem.
They will have to sooner or later.
Especially when it becomes blindingly obvious to all rational minds that Covids 19/20/21 are not ‘natural’, but manufactured by the Old Normal which we are now scrambling to restore. That every factory farm and forest fire bring the next pandemic nearer.

11/05/2020

From Written
We can’t get Covid 19 and its successors under control until we stop generating them by our toxic animal husbandry techniques, and devastation of the ecosystem for profit.
This demands a radical debunking of the Junk Economy and its absurd Utopian myths.
There is as much scientific consensus that ecocidal economics spawn zootic pathogens like Covid19 as there is that CO2 emissions cause global warming. The two disasters are directly linked to Deathbed Consumerism, and will demand the same shift from systemic competition to system cooperation to enable any sort of sustainable civilisation.

07/05/2020

From Written
Little old man upstairs with severe health problems robbed at knife-point by a Covid-appeasing scumbag posing as a charity worker..
If one of these toerags gets caught on some estates I could name, there would be blood on the streets. And then there could well be retaliations. And so the chaos would begin.
The 2011 firestorm was triggered by a single police shooting.

29/04/2020

What the 1918 flu pandemic tells us about whether social distancing works
29 Apr 2020 13:16
In response to MFC_Lion
But Consumerism is daily making the conditions for viral mutation and transmission more favourable.
Every factory-farm and forest fire brings the next ‘unpredictable’ Pandemic nearer.
View discussion

What the 1918 flu pandemic tells us about whether social distancing works
29 Apr 2020 13:14
The Kansas Flu originated in Fort Riley Kansas (solid factory-farm land) before the USA entered the Great War. And was exported to the world via infected Doughboys sent to the Western Front.  

21/04/2020

NEWSLETTER EDITORIAL.
It’s safe to say many of us are feeling the strain by now. And the news of an extended Lockdown doesn’t leave many reasons to be cheerful. We appear to be waiting for Science to provide a vaccine which will restore some kind of everyday life.
The good news is that Science has already confirmed what many already knew – that helping others not only makes you feel good, it is good for you. Information which seems very timely now.
The great feeling of working together is not just emotional, it is as chemical as a bottle of wine. A scientific fact. When we do something nice for others, without conditions, measurable doses of so-called ‘feel-good’ hormones like Endorphins and Seratonin are released in the brain. These create a ‘Helper’s High’ as stimulating and potentially addictive as any artificial substance, and are designed to keep us helping and caring. Everyone’s a winner – as long as the actions are sincere.
Another thing it’s probably safe to say is that everyone hearing our amazing Thursday night balcony tributes to key-workers knows exactly what the scientists are talking about. Or they wouldn’t happen.
We are all now discovering the true value of those who perform the most essential tasks in society. And hopefully, we are also getting too hooked on the Endorphin-hit of helping and caring to do without it.
If we change that much, it won’t all have been for nothing. Essential workers will not need to risk their lives at work, or have mass public demonstrations to get respect, decent wages and conditions.
The Scouts motto of Do A Good Deed Every Day has always been something of a joke, but its time may have come as a pick-me-up for everyone facing yet another photocopy-day in Lockdown.
When it ends, our first handshake will mean something very different to every one we had before. And hopefully, by then, the world will be a slightly more appreciative place, at least.

16/04/2020

Coronavirus has killed 30,000 Americans, and all Trump can do is blame the WHO16
Apr 2020 13:46
In response to OhReallyFFS
Self-analysis is the curse of progressive politics.
It comes with the territory.
The price of a rational ideology, over the random ragbag of myths and base instincts which constitutes so-called ‘right wing thought’, which is a flagrant contradiction in terms.
Reactionary dogma is always based on superstition and fear. Its driving hormones are Adrenalin and testosterone. Its foundation is ruthless competition.
Progressive thought is always based on rational causality and trust. Its driving hormones are Endorphin and serotonin. Its foundation is free co-operation.
Reciprocal Social Altruism.

@Lil_Richardjohn Apr 16  Replying to @iitsonlyagame  and @BBCNews
Chinese scientists publicly released the genetic sequence of Covid-19 on 11 January. By early February the WHO was in a position to distribute a Covid-19 test worldwide, but the US government opted not to have it fast-tracked through approval. Forrest Trump guilty as charged.    

14/04.2020  

@Lil_Richardjohn It will be far too bad to sustain cash-crazed Consumerism any longer. That fairytale is over. Indefinite productive Covid19 paralysis on one side, and the fatal certainties of Global warming on the other.  

Little Richardjohn @Lil_Richardjohn
So much for the 3D Printing Revolution. By now every unit in the country should be hacked, and churning out gowns masks gloves and visors to an NHS design.. A massive failure of technology.

Little Richardjohn   @Lil_Richardjohn
Never mind the Truth. Just give you the pap that you want to hear. Relatives of the Carehome Massacre certainly WILL want to know why their loved-ones died, and of what, and who was to blame. When will Johnson repay what it cost the Socialist Health Service to save his life?  

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @BBCNews
“Total” power = Totalitarianism. Surely? The USA leads the world with 66,000 Covid 19 deaths so far, and un-coincidentally, has the least co-ordinated response in the world. In spite of ‘Total’ presidential power. Trump must be the most useless dictator ever.  

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @michaelwhite
You might be depressed that Consumerism has been unmasked again as the toxic fraud it is, but I’m not. Just realistic about it, and the options which are about to employ Human creativity and potential to the full. For the first time in millennia.

13/04/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn
“Not all companies will survive #coronavirus.” No kidding? But many will scramble back to work too soon to beat the competition, and cut corners in the process. Countries will do the same, gaining short term economic advantage, but keeping #Covid19 alive. Beware Carpetbaggers.

@Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @pencil_gang @Eddiedragon2and 2 others
Your ‘real’ world is one where destroying valuable food is more profitable (than) giving it away. You are obviously just another bootlicking Boss’s Pet. With no concept of how the world works

12/04/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn
Maybe he won’t be such a “petrified adolescent” anymore. Now he realises his life was saved by the Socialist Health Service. Or ‘in spite of’ as Trump would say. Who DOES Trump thanks for Johnson’s survival anyway?      

07/04/2020  

@Lil_Richardjohn
Next week the Chancellor and Health minister are on course for a collision over the Lockdown. A mistake either way or failure to act on time could be serious. Who has the authority to prevent division? @Lil_Richardjohn Good old Socialist Health Service! Nye Bevan would be proud.

@Lil_Richardjohn   With most Junk TV in Lockdown, who will advertise on it? The Agencies!”! Will Nobody Think of The Agencies!!? Want to sell your car on Primetime TV? Now’s The Time.  

01/04/2020
[FROM WRITTEN]
Where is the mass-mobilisation of national 3D Print capacity to produce face-masks, goggles and other PPE? When will the giant, Frack-fuelled Ineos plastic refinery start producing sanitiser? When will BUPA stop charging for its intensive care beds? Why so much carpetbagging?

30/03/2020

Rob Kenyon commented on The Today Programme‘s post. 31 Mar 2020, 11:40 BBC Radio 4 – Best of Today, Help for the self-employed during the coronavirus outbreak bbc.co.uk Today’s Today dutifully pointed out the plight of the Horticultural industry at this time – with stocks being dumped due to The Event.
Sadly, every word of it could be applied far more gruesomely to the Pet Industry.
Unless it has made unprecedented preparations, it is hard to see how the sector will avoid a massive cull much of its stock.
Whether this spectacle is more traumatic (and effective) on the animal loving British people than the deaths of their ancestors remains to be seen

@Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @goldenpdx47 @RhysJen93069803 and @WSJ
And the federal government under Trump is the most incompetent of all.
Where are the vital national regulations to force regions to comply with basic rules as in civilised states – the national preparations for this long foretold disaster?
Smothered by Trumpist Neo-Darwinism.  

30/03/2020

[FROM WRITTEN]
Cummings ‘self-isolating’.
Trump still forcing the states to duke it out in the marketplace for life-saving equipment.
Everyone knows he’s insane, including his fans – who either don’t care or are insane themselves and can’t tell the difference.

29/03/2020

[FROM WRITTEN]
State of Emergency. Military supposed to be delivering PPE. Shop-staff still unprotected. No evidence of any change in TV schedules yet.

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @goldenpdx47 @RhysJen93069803 and  @WSJ
Trumps idea of leadership is to make the states duke it out for respirators, testing kits and Personal Protection Equipment. 
A huge squalid bidding war which the poorest states lose. Every mad dictator in history has had the same idea.

Amid our fear, we’re rediscovering utopian hopes of a connected world
29 Mar 2020 20:36. In response to ThisNameisMine
Globalised does not mean connected.
In practice Globalisation has alienated people from each other, and from their own natures more than ever.
A world of consumers feeding off their respective servants – a class they seldom have any social interaction with.
Feeling connected with the rest of humanity is a different political dimension entirely.

Amid our fear, we’re rediscovering utopian hopes of a connected world
29 Mar 2020 20:27 In response to AJVC1991
If there is a truce, the problem will be preventing wholesale corporate carpetbagging, with mass pillage of the bankrupt wreckage, producing an even more powerful global profit axis than now.
Who and who’s army is going to stop them?

28/03/2021

[FROM WRITTEN]
Health-worker testing starts today (too late).
Apparently, Peckham like a nightmare. Shuffling Zombies in shopping-lines, and wailing Banshees proclaiming the end of the world.

27/03/2020

[FROM WRITTEN]
Johnson tests positive for Covid. Who else has he infected?

Ridiculous queues outside supermarkets.

Health Secr3etary Hancock also positive. Whitty self-isolating. So much for taking their own advice.

The 4 Metre circle ‘distance’ chalked in the garden seems to have st4ruck a chord. Families using it to play volleyball.

26/03/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn Glad to see you confess at last that Capitalism kills more people than any bug. We’ve been telling you that for a century.
But Capitalism is now a dead duck. And the Covid 19 crisis is a welcome rehearsal for the task of rescuing civilisation from Capitalist Eco-Barbarism.  

From Written

Frustration Day.
Feeling like a Greyhound in the slips but can’t do anything but pass on information in the newsletter.
About 500,000 signed up to the NHS Support ‘Umbrella’. Not sure what I can tick except the ‘Check and Chat’ option, which is what I’ll probably do. But the Juniper operation has to carry on. A ‘Zoom Group’? But something more real has to happen alongside. Not to mention more complicated support for the effects of the recession.
First mass balcony applause for Key Workers. Wonderful moment, we’ll see if it catches on. Hoping it does.

Local support networks are springing up everywhere. Co-ordination and safeguarding will be a nightmare. How to prevent spreading infection, while getting help to those who need it most – and stop the nutters and shy7sters from exp;loiting the vulnerable.

Eleven weeks since we were first warned by China what this would do, and we still have medics using the wrong protective gear, and no testing, anjd have started social distancing far too late.
This is all largely preventable. The army is mow trucking bits and pieces here and there, but it’s all playing catch-up. The workers at the face are screaming about shortages.

.

25/03/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn Either: 1. People will have lost the habit or find another habit. or
2. People will have forgotten what life was like before The Event and will Remain Indoors. or
3. They will be ravenous for live shows and will flood the houses. Which will make up for your losses now.  

@Lil_Richardjohn As the Modern day Chamberlain, waging a Phoney War against #Covid19 and #ClimateCrisis, Johnson must be criticised until it hurts.
The @Telegraph‘s degree of servility in 1940 would have lost us the war.  

@Lil_Richardjohn
You’re confusing them with the terrorist Fracking gangsters and other Carbon Cowboy barbarians who are determined to destroy the ecosystem and civilisation. The global terrorists who have eaten your brain.

Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @afneil
You’re just annoyed that CV19 is doing XTr’s job for it You haven’t yet given them credit for cancelling all mass gatherings during the crisis. Do it now. Human Capitalism certainly IS the enemy – unless you’re a medieval Science-hater. This is a rehearsal for tackling GW. Learn.  

25/03/2020

From Written.

Johnson spouting about the government “Putting its arms about the workforce”
Sickening hypocrisy and soundbite of the day. Used at least 4 times in first 10 minutes of speech.
In fact he’s a Chamberlain choking on Churchill’s cigar, waging a completely Phoney War against Covid19, and more pathetically against Global Warming.
Sounds off with:
“That’s All Folks.” Like the cartoon he is.

 24/03/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn People DYING are so “mad” right now. But not Insane, like TRump, who is playing games with American lives. “New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio described the rate of new coronavirus infections in the city as “staggering” and an “explosion”  

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to  @WSJ and @bradleyhope
Not every day the economy gets a $2Trillion shot in the arm. The most since….. ever!

@Lil_Richardjohn  @WildLondon
Pipistrelle Bat hunting in our garden this morning about 10.30.
Is this normal for SE London

Rob Kenyon replied to Stuart Allen‘s comment. 24 Mar 2020, 19:40 Bring all private hospitals into public ownership weownit.org.uk Of course BUPA doesnt have many ICU beds. It lets the NhS do dirty work like that. JUst as it as to poach its nurses from the NhS.
It doesnt need ICUs to treat gout and cirhossis of the liver.

From Written

Warnings of scammers already.
Staying indoors now not a request but a ‘rule’, says ‘Ancock.
Police will break up gatherings. We’re only to go out for exercise, shopping for essentials work, or medical reasons. In other words, everything as normal.
Nobody is confused at all.

The wording of the 4.30 briefing was as clear as mud. Three robots speaking gibberish.
Say what you like about British Journalists, at least they speak English. The contrast between their questions and the slithery slimy answers was chilling.

Told by London Borough of Southwark to lock the Ball-Court. Which I was going to do anyway.
Jaki so afraid she even takes her shoes off before coming in the flat
Talking to Paul while locking the court – moaning a bit, but very scrupulous, and discouraging his boy to stay at a safe distance from the other kids. Difficult to see how that can work in a mixed group at play without constant supervision.
Kids will feel the strain more than most and family pressures will rise. Paul saying it’s driving them crazy already. .

23/03/2020

Official Lockdown Day 1.

Rob Kenyon replied to Adam Burnett‘s comment. 23 Mar 2020, 14:42 4,500 retired doctors and nurses sign up to rejoin NHS in just 48 hours thelondoneconomic.com Why did YOUR precious government devastate the NHS into this dire state leaving us playing catchup?
Answer – For POLITICAL reasons.To undermine the idea of society.
Stop being political and stand up for the NHS and society. Destroy this tory barbarism
Rob Kenyon replied to Adam Burnett‘s comment. 23 Mar 2020, 14:45 4,500 retired doctors and nurses sign up to rejoin NHS in just 48 hours thelondoneconomic.com Your preciousgovernment is not 2Pulling Together”, it is pulling itself apart and delivering mixed messages.
The Cabinet can’t agree.
So which government should we not criticise?
The one which agrees with the mayor of London, or Johnson & Cummings?
Rob Kenyon commented on John McMorris‘s post. 23 Mar 2020, 14:35 George’s Son on Twitter twitter.com Cummimgs has been putting Profit before human life all his career.
Why should he stop now?
“At a private engagement at the end of February, Cummings outlined the government’s strategy.
Those present say it was “herd immunity”. Protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.”
The Times..
https://twitter.com/whyohwhyfather/status/1241636403110457344

@Lil_Richardjohn
“The corporation is also preparing to launch daily educational programmes now that schools have closed, along with plans to produce shows that cover exercising at home and cooking with reduced supplies.”

Rob Kenyon replied to Damien Principle‘s comment. 23 Mar 2020, 13:13Shameful media still slamming Donald Trump during coronavirus crisis: Goodwin nypost.com
Trump inherited US prosperity just as he inherited his personal wealth. And has squandered it just as freely. while creating the most toxic , divided USA in memory, and destroying the balance of international peace .
His latest insanity is to whine about the problems facing rich people running for office.
EVERYTHING is about him.
Pandering to his corporate gangster buddies while destroying basic human rights is a carbon copy of 1930’s nightmare politics.
Ignoring the basic truth of science is pandering to medieval levels of Superstition and paranoia. As embodied by the other nutters he surrounds himself with.
I could go on and on.
But as a disciple, you are totally indoctrinated and immune from facts.
Your pathetic servile corporate Obedience is just willing slavery.
Inflict it on those with as little self-esteem as yourself.
Whether you like it or not, the future will be cooperative, which you can call socialist if you like – but that won’t make it go away.
The sick world you worship is dead.

Rob Kenyon replied to Damien Principle‘s comment.
23 Mar 2020, 13:13
Shameful media still slamming Donald Trump during coronavirus crisis: Goodwin
Trump inherited US prosperity just as he inherited his personal wealth. And has squandered it just as freely. while creating the most toxic , divided USA in memory, and destroying the balance of international peace .
His latest insanity is to whine about the problems facing rich people running for office.
EVERYTHING is about him.
Pandering to his corporate gangster buddies while destroying basic human rights is a carbon copy of 1930’s nightmare politics.
Ignoring the basic truth of science is pandering to medieval levels of Superstition and paranoia. As embodied by the other nutters he surrounds himself with.
I could go on and on.
But as a disciple, you are totally indoctrinated and immune from facts.
Your pathetic servile corporate Obedience is just willing slavery.
Inflict it on those with as little self-esteem as yourself.
Whether you like it or not, the future will be cooperative, which you can call socialist if you like – but that won’t make it go away.
The sick world you worship is dead.

Johnson formally announces Lockdown terms.
https://www.heart.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-announces-lockdown/

From Written
A lovely bright Spring morning with not a cloud in the sky.
The BBC frantically improvising to get live programming on-air. Presenters working from home via telephone and video links with interviewees.
Medical workers terrified by lack of preparation and co-ordination. Supermarket food-raiding doesn’t help them. By the time they get to shop, there is nothing left for their families.
Schools finished this Friday – indefinitely. Schools meant to have online education technology in place, which parents are meant to monitor.

Announcement of stricter controls to come later today after legislation is passed.
Everyone still struggling for a neat summarisation of what’s happening to Humanity – both the negatives and positives.
The metaphors are obvious. Sci-Fi and disaster movies have painted the picture for a century. But we’re all still lost for words. Not because there’s nothing to say, but because there’s too much. And too many urgent warnings and hopes to express at once.
Never miss out on a good crisis.
‘DO NOT MINGLE!’ is the slogan of the day. But the tubes are still crammed, which is inevitable with so many on zero-hours contracts and other dismally paid jobs.
But in general, town is fairly deserted.

The bill in parliament today is to remove the obligation on Local Authorities to care properly for the disabled – except when it would ‘breach their Human Rights’, which are fiendishly difficult to estrablish, and getting more so because of Brexit.

Describing the Nightmare.
Silent, invisible, invincible, omnipotent, malevolent, inescapable, toxic, indescribable, mind-fucking evil spirits.
We now have a sense of what the Medieval mind felt like from the inside.

22/03/2020

Rob Kenyon commented on Damien Principle‘s post. 22 Mar 2020, 18:33 U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic washingtonpost.com
Trump is so great he covered up the pandemic in January.
God Bless Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2cMuVtDQOsKomS34326LrLSycd3clTYLSUzi8dwyecfMeXNXNvk5gytmI

Here’s how to care for loved ones suffering with coronavirus
22 Mar 2020 12:08
And who are the “loved ones”?
If it is to have any positive effects, the CV19 experience has to radically expand and socialise our definition of “love” beyond the tribal borders we have erected between us. The concept is of Love is relatively new and totally nebulous.
Since this is a unique event in human history, the Post CV19 world has to be different.
One which is compatible with the even greater challenge of rescuing civilisation from Climate Crisis.

21/03/202

@Lil_Richardjohn Talk about Pandemics.
Britain has been ravaged by the brain-rotting Brexit Plague for over 4 years.
With no sign of ‘peaking’ yet.;

@Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @JamesCleverly
Because the PM and the government are proven chronic LIARS who have rejected science and professional expertise whenever it suits their overriding motivation of making money. They are self-proclaimed ‘Grand Wizards’ of Science Denialism. Why should anyone trust them?

March 21.

For Flamenco News:
At a terrible nightmare time which screams out for flamenco poetry to make sense of it, we are all in solitary confinement. But just as the flamenco world will have to adapt to the new reality, so will the rest of us.
We are all now discovering the true value of those who perform the most essential tasks in society, whose work was previously taken for granted. And hopefully, we are also getting too addicted to the Endorphins produced by helping and caring to go back to fighting each other for survival. If we can adapt that far, flamenco will be fine – when the tears have dried.
Like everyone else, all Flamenco Express performances have been cancelled. And realistically, 2021 seems the soonest we can expect to appear again.
Normally, this could be written off to experience, and Life would Go On. However, a year is a long time, and flamenco feeds on intimate contact with the audience and between artists. It does not thrive in captivity, or with every venue closed. But it does thrive on community spirit.
Freeing flamenco again presumably means rediscovering what freedom means. But flamenco always helped us do that, producing some of the free-est human spirits ever. So it should be second nature.
Either way, we have to make the effort, not least to repay the sacrifices made by so many.

20/03/2020 (Spring Equinox)

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @JamesCleverly
What is Bonzo doing about the self-employed? Nothing.
Testing? Nothing.
Ensuring food-chains? Nothing with knobs on.
Your twisted NHS-busting ‘Austerity’ made us this vulnerable.
You will be the cause of many deaths.

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @JamesEFoster
We are looking at a world in which someone like Ghandi has called a global General Strike as a non-violent direct action to achieve their common goal. Now that we’re All Out, what should it be? Surely nobody wants to go back to the bad old days.

@Lil_Richardjohn
For once would you READ something you see? “more and less strict social distancing measures could plausibly be effective .. These would need to be in place for at least most of a year. ..at least half of the year would be spent under the stricter measures” https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/873729/06-spi-m-o-consensus-view-on-behavioural-and-social-interventions.pdf

@Lil_Richardjohn
Italy was always Europe’s gateway to the East. And when it let in the Black Death the labour market was never the same again. Now that everyone knows that prosperity is created by the workforce, not the rich, maybe there will be an equally radical hike in political consciousness.

@Lil_Richardjohn
With most Junk TV in Lockdown, who will advertise on it? The Agencies!”! Will Nobody Think of The Agencies!!? Want to sell your car on Primetime TV? Now’s The Time.  

@Lil_Richardjohn.
Much as you’d like it, #CV19 is not an excuse to destroy the Truth – much as you hate it. You’re loving this. Another War in which the first victim is Truth.
Political Capitalist Austerity has cost many British lives already and its greatest harvest of Neglect is yet to come.  

@Lil_Richardjohn
Still no mention of common infection sites in social housing.

@Lil_Richardjohn
Thanks for nicking my lead. Copper-infused ‘screen-touch’ gloves are hostile to bugs. That’s why hospitals use copper on handrails. Meanwhile, housing estate rails and lift buttons Carry On Spreading #CV19. Ministers don’t live there.

Rob Kenyon commented on Patrick Marshall‘s post. 20 Mar 2020, 12:52 What we wouldn’t give for a Gordon Brown or John Major right now | John Crace theguardian.com
Tory Austerity will have killed more British people than CV19.
But they will be mostly the poor and powerless.
Now that the House of Lords is threatened, ‘We’re All In It Together!”.
Like last time. Who’s up for being Fooled Again?
“Moreover, after years of improvements that curbed the overall impact of preventable disease, progress has started to reverse. Between 1990 and 2012 the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs),1
where a preventable risk factor was an underlying cause, fell from 7.7 million to 5.6 million. By 2017, this had once again risen to 5.9 million (IHME 2019). A similar trend is also observed for deaths attributable to a preventable risk factor. Had the trend from 1990 and 2012 continued, we estimate that THERE COULD HAVE BEEN 130,000DEATHS AVERTED between 2012 and 2017.”
https://www.ippr.org/files/2019-06/public-health-and-prevention-june19.pdf#page=22

Rob Kenyon commented on Patrick Marshall‘s post. 20 Mar 2020, 11:02
What we wouldn’t give for a Gordon Brown or John Major right now | John Crace theguardian.com Johnson is in a killing-spree daydream.
He obviously think that Brits are immune, and that he knows better than every expert – who are all telling him to Test,. test, test.
He’s just repeating the Italian mistake and signing the death-warrants of your aged relatives.
Hope you’re happy for him.

Rob Kenyon replied to Jenny Pitts‘s comment. 20 Mar 2020, 10:34
Jenny Pitts It is now more essential than ever. And SO beautifully produced.
Everything presented with time to appreciate it.
And you'[re wrong. He is never a vulgar Brit.
In fact he’s quite scathing about our contributions when we deserve it.
His spiritual home is naturally Southern France.
I stumbled across it on iPlayer and keep it constantly to hand.
Thank God for the BBC.

I’m trying to keep the panic down’ – the coronavirus impact on music
20 Mar 2020 12:03
This is what ‘No Such Thing As Society’ is like.
Total Alienation.

It’s curtains for theatre – but not, let us hope, for too long20 Mar 2020 11:58
“Sheila, before The Event there was a thing called ‘theatre’.
What was ‘theatre’?”
“Was it a food?”
“Yes, it probably was. REMAIN INDOORS!”

19/03/2020 Day 7. 

@Lil_Richardjohn.
hold on to your hat. Its only a matter of time before CV19 is blamed on a sinister plot between Greta Tunberg and Chinese Communism to destroy capitalism and enforce eco-sustainable co-operative economics.

@Lil_Richardjohn So much for “There is no such thing as Society.” If Society is good enough to rescue the world from capitalism, and for Wars against disease, it is good enough for wars against Poverty and Environmental Disaster.

@Lil_Richardjohn
Seize the day.
This Carbon holiday is exactly the same world we will need to adjust to in order to mitigate the effects of climate disaster. A dress rehearsal for the cooperative Community Austerity of a sustainable future. The world must never be the same again.

@Lil_Richardjohn It clearly, finally proves that competitive globalised Consumerism is a disaster.
An ideological, moral, political and economic dead-end which can only guarantee total Climate Catastrophe.  

@Lil_Richardjohn Capitalism never knows what it’s got until it’s gone. NOW will it believe us when we say that the foundation of the economy is the WORKFORCE?
No Going Back. The Post and Pre-CV19 worlds have to be as different as 1950 was from 1935.
The same world needed to fight Global Warming.    

Rob Kenyon commented on Jim Strachan‘s post. 19 Mar 2020, 16:04
Metro on Twitter twitter.com “This corner shop is giving away facemasks, antibacterial hand gel and cleaning wipes to OAPs in a bid to stop the spread of Coronavirus. The remarkable act of generosity is costing the business nearly £2,000, as each bag costs £2 to put together.”
https://twitter.com/MetroUK/status/1240661227396911105

Rob Kenyon commented on Damien Principle‘s post. 19 Mar 2020, 15:34
N.Y. Gov. Cuomo: President Trump Is “Fully Engaged” On Coronavirus Crisis; “Very Creative And Energetic” realclearpolitics.com And then carry on using exactly the same cooperative strategies to combat Climate Crisis.
The Post-Event world will be VERY different.
This is the rehearsal we need for the Big One.
Which is why the big gangsters like Trump and Bolsonaro deny it’s a problem.
It means the end of their world.

From Written
Growing sense of panic among health-workers.
There has probably never been an experience of this kind on this scale in human history.
Many families are now facing the prospect of being locked up with each other for months on end. Many will go stir-crazy and the suicide/mental-illness/domestic violence rates are bound to rise.
Most places where people live are not homes but glorified dormitories. Mostly designed for far fewer people than live there. Like the traditional Labourer’s hostel, slept in by the Night-shift during the day

17/03/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn @CovidAidUK
More habitually shared surfaces which harbour infection.Rob Kenyon added a new photo.
17 Mar 2020, 15:30

Government Ministers don’t live on council estates.
If you do, remind them that handrails and lift buttons are prime sites for cross-infection.

16/03/2020

Rob Kenyon commented on Alex Walton‘s post.
16 Mar 2020, 19:54
We’ve got 2 lovely houses bubbling away very nicely for next month, then this happens.
This weekend’s shows were very weird.
We just managed to fly people back to Spain this morning by the skin of their teeth. Don’t know when well be able to bring them back.

From Written

Britain – the World – feels in chaos. Everyone sensible is now seriously scared.
The stock-piling and bulk-buying has started.
London is especially in the shit, and heading tpwards Italian depths.

Street markets being traditionally ‘defiant’. Being ‘resilient’ and ‘not giving in’, and reviving the ‘Blitz Spirit’ as usual. More dead men walking due to Johnson’s stupid bluster and rhetoric.
Theatres, pubs, clubs – all ‘recommended‘ to close, and people ‘strongly advised‘ not to go there. This puts those businesses beyond the help of insurance. We mustn’t upset the Insurance Companies, or BUPA, who will stop #cooperating’ with the NHS if we don’t pay them millions a day to rent their excess emergency capacity.
Requisition NOW!

Every Hour things get more alarming. Skyrocketing increases in Madrid over 2 days probably mean the same bomb could drop on London this weekend.
Johnson announced today that relatives of anyone “showing new symptoms” should self-isolate – stay away from bars, cinemas and theatres.
Not only is this a sneak-preview of and dress-rehearsal for the Global Warming Crisis, it’s also a test of computer modelling, which this government is now a fan of, while ignoring it over Global Warming.

Theatres generally not closing yet. ‘Situation being monitored closely ..blah blah’.
But the word is that when they do close it will be until about June. In time for Henley but not the Roses or Devonshire Park in April. Sales at DP: Dress Circle 75% sold plus boxes, Stalls 50%. Nightmare.
We’ll be OK in the short term because we don’t have any running expenses, but how many theatres will be left after the fire for us to play in?
The Stables last Saturday was full. That probably wouldn’t have happened this weekend. As for their Macbeth in September – who knows?

15/03/2020  

@Lil_Richardjohn
“The UK should not be trying to create herd immunity. Policy should be directed at slowing the outbreak to a manageable rate.
All this & more should have started weeks ago.”
Dr William Hanage is professor of the epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard  

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @rec777777 @bobbystrand1 and @afneil
Who are “OUR” experts? There is only one virus. It doesn’t obey British law.
Since when does Johnson trust experts? His cabinet is riddled with Climate Science denialists. People as rational as DAESH.  

@Lil_Richardjohn.
Precisely. Only not just the “near” future. It’s a TEENTSY sneak preview of #ClimateCrisis . The foreseeable future.  

@Lil_Richardjohn
Replying to @GaryLineker WILL NO-ONE THINK OF THE SATELLITE BARONS!!?? Imagine how it must feel for them having to repay all those subscriptions they have taken under false pretences? All those awful strung-out subscribers baying at their gates: “MUST HAVE FOOT-BALL.. MUST HAVE FOOT-BALL..”  

@Lil_Richardjohn
Reporting scary stuff is only a problem to an alienated population of isolated individuals. A working community naturally develops a healthy scepticism to fear-mongering.
We no longer have many working communities – for obvious reasons..  

@Lil_Richardjohn
WHAT “community”~? The object of Hancock’s politics is to destroy all community values, replacing them with Brand Loyalties,. Let MacDonalds and Coca Cola sort it out. Between them they owe the NHS a giga-fortune anyway.
Ban movement of all their extremely non-essential goods.  

@Lil_Richardjohn @SkySportsNews
Will NO-ONE think of the Children??!! When will they be repaid for all the football they now wont see? Will they be offered counselling in order to save their marriages? Divorce lawyers will be another group who end up CV19 rich.  

@Lil_Richardjohn Replying to @afneil
A national TV address would put all the blame on Johnson. This way he can do his usual disappearing act and fire Ancock when it goes pants.  

@Lil_Richardjohn Mar 15
“We must all make sacrifices” – except for @BUPA,
who will make a killing selling beds to the @NHS.
Some “National Effort”.

This coronavirus crisis has forced the retirement of pantomime Johnso
15 Mar 2020 10:40  In response to Hermann22
Then your solution must be the state acquisition of BUPA under emergency powers

15 Mar 2020 10:38. In response to Hermann22
You mean this is the time to bleed the NHS to death and fatten BUPA shareholders even more?
These beds must be requisitioned, not bought at Market prices.
BUPA has leeched off the state for far too long already.
Time for some payback.  

The Nanny State Made Me review – rose-tinted defence of welfare state
15 Mar 2020 11:23

Perhaps into other forms of music that seem more relevant to them.

More likely selling their latest hit to Saatchis to advertise gut-rot or cars that go too fast.
It’s fascinating how few tunes from the Maconochie era have been prostituted to Consumerism.
Meanwhile modern pop is fundamentally founded on Junk-Culture principles of power-worship and self-advancement.
The welfare state gave everyone a taste of a thing called freedom. The only freedom now is to choose between mortgage deals and tuition fee packages. To Obey, Conform and Consume.
“Obey & Serve” is the formal motto of one of the largest chains of consumerist Madrassars currently perverting young minds.

14/03/2020

@Lil_Richardjohn.
Replying to @afneil
How long before we do face rationing of goods and energy? Or is it too early to think about? Obviously some people have thought about it and come to their own conclusions. ·

@Lil_Richardjohn. Mar 14
Full house tonight in Hastings.. Mixed feelings.
http://stablestheatre.co.uk/flamenco-express/

13/03/2020

Wales and Scotland try for Six Nations normality amid the chaos
13 Mar 2020 11:30
Might the abused term ‘iconic’ be genuinely used about this game?
After the brutal and judicial mayhem of the last round, plus the significance of holding the event during the Coca-cola Plague, there seems to be a lot at stake somehow.

13/03/2020
From Written Diary
Possible Covid benefits:
1. Enforced rediscovery of the point of Communities.
2. An honest valuation of the vital role of the BBC.
3. A rehearsal for the job of tackling the effects of Global Warming.
4. To discredit the globalised Money machine.

Theatres cinemas, schools, pubs still open. But the advice is no gatherings over 120..
All football and large crowds suspended on the grounds of saving emergency services for more important functions.
Shared surfaces in housing estates must be a source of infection.  Must get out some posters about hand-rails and lift buttons.

12/03/2020 From Written Diary

Italy in total lockdown. Ireland closing schools. Supermarkets crammed.
Trump’s random decision to ban EU contact has crashed the markets again. Only 2 days after record falls. Global recession is now widely predicted.

At tonight’s inquorate Tenants Association meeting, Covid was the only item on the agenda. This was only 2 hours after the announcement.

Big Johnson announcement tonight after COBRA meeting.
A real sense of occasion now. We are told to expect family deaths, and to Carry On Regardless, and Do Our Bit.
The fool from the Express at the press conference was full of Blitz polare. Oozing crocodile tears and fortified bulldog spirit.

11/03/2020

Rob Kenyon. Facebook. 11 Mar 2020, 10:26
Just a thought.
There are (at least) 2 kinds of glove which weave copper into the surface.
1. Touch-screen gloves for using phones in cold weather.
2. Compression gloves for arthritis sufferers.
Copper is a well-known anti-microbial element. Many hospitals are surfacing handrails with copper to prevent spread of in-house infections.
Worth a try.
That or slug tape.
https://macsources.com/glider-gloves-copper-infused-touch-screen-gloves-review/

Tags: , , ,
← Older Posts
Newer Posts →