Sky News and Tortoise Media have created an extensive record of financial interests in Westminster since December 2019, when the current parliament was formed.
As shocking as all that is, the thing that jumps out at me, are the amounts of money each party receives, and where those donations come from.
Since 2019 The Conservative Party have raked in a staggering £76 million in donations. More than double The Labour Party’s £32.4 million. Which is more than double the The Liberal Democrats’ £15.1 million. Think about this for a second, the Conservatives received over £24 million more than all the other opposition parties combined, combined! That’s a stark financial illustration of the fight for power in the United Kingdom. It’s like Ukraine fighting Russia without the support of the United States or Europe.
The other thing that interests me is where this money comes from. When Unite the Union donates £8.8 million to The Labour Party, they’re using the money they got from their 1.4 million members. That’s 1.4 million people given a voice by Labour. In that same period JC Bamford (JCB) gave The Conservative Party £3.3 million. That’s one person’s interests, Anthony Bamford, given a voice by the Conservatives.
Please don’t try and tell me donations don’t buy influence. Why would anyone give money if it didn’t benefit them one way or the other? I’m not talking corruption, bungs, manila envelopes under the table, although I’m certain that happens. I’m talking funding those who align with your interests. I know that’s a really obvious thing to say, but it’s never framed that way if and when it’s reported.
This same pattern plays out when you look at all party donations. Very wealth individuals donate to the Conservatives, while unions with millions of members donate to Labour.
One party represents the voice of millions, the other just a few.
Two things jump out when I look at the government’s anti-strike proposals. First, curtailing an individual’s right to withdraw their labour frames workers as assets. Not in the “benefit” understanding of the word, but as “property”. And second, I wonder if these attacks are part of a wider push by libertarians towards charter cities?
The idea pushed by Rishi Sunak, reported in The Guardian, that the “right to strike has to be balanced with the right of the British public to be able to go about their lives without suffering” is government doublespeak, code for employers having the right to profit, no matter the cost or suffering of workers.
Similar rhetoric was used back in 2016, during the Junior Doctors dispute, by the then Health Secretary, our current Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. I remember lots of talk about poorer outcomes for patients at weekends, and a demand for a seven-days-a-week health service. The NHS has always been a seven-days-a-week service.
The government’s plan, Hunt’s endgame, was to make the contracts more palatable in a private sector takeover of the NHS.
Caroline Molloy has written a detailed and damning account of Jeremy Hunt’s time as Health Secretary for Open Democracy. She includes this quote from his contribution to Direct Democracy, a 2005 book where he outlines his ambition “to break down the barriers between private and public provision, in effect denationalising the provision of healthcare in Britain”. Hunt thought then, and my guess still thinks, the NHS is “no longer relevant in the 21st century”. I think he’s wrong, universal healthcare is not a cost it’s a benefit?
The dispute with the Junior Doctors was eventually resolved. Hunt got what he wanted, a five-of-seven workforce. They’re the same conditions expected of retail workers. No overtime for working unsocial hours, weekends, or bank holidays. You work five out of every seven days, regardless. It’s brutal, and takes its toll on the mind, body, and soul, of anyone forced to endure it.
Attacks on workers rights, rolling back pay and conditions, is always framed as a desire for efficiencies. It’s not about efficiencies. It’s about getting more for less. More work for less pay. Meaning more profit for employers, even in the public sector, because as we have seen the difference between public and private is being broken down. I fear the reason for these attacks, on all of our rights, is a wider push towards the model of England as a collection of charter cities.
I’ve been reading about charter cities since the referendum. When Boris Johnson became Prime Minister and Rishi Sunak was his Chancellor of the Exchequer the idea seemed to gain traction. Everything I read about them makes my jaw clench, triggering all kinds of dystopian scenarios in my hyper-vigilance. I can imagine a future in which Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland seek independence from England. Each for their own reasons but primarily because they’ve had enough of the colonial attitudes of Westminster. If they go, it’s possible the historic regions of Northumberland and Cornwall will follow.
I’ve written about the dissolution of the Union before, way back in March 2021. I haven’t seen much since then to change my understanding, that “the Conservatives will use these cries for independence as a crisis. One that lets them calve up England as if they were the ancient Kings of Wessex or Mercia”.
The way I see it, a much reduced England will “be transformed into a series of charter cities. Regions that will claim to be hubs of enterprise and entrepreneurship. When in fact they will be islands of tax avoidance, shell companies, and post office boxes that hide wealth”. In the worst imaginings of this dystopia, I fear the average person will be forced to swear fealty to the cities and the “sovereign individuals” who rule them. We’ll have to take the knee for a job and place to live.
Some argue that charter cities are the reason for Brexit. I think the reasons for Brexit are many and varied. I view their implementation as opportunism. Libertarian think-tanks have been singing their praises for years. The chaos of Brexit is giving them a chance to put that theory into action. Chris Grey in his 15 August 2022 article in the BylineTimes, argues that concerns about charter cities are a conspiracy theory, and warns us to be cautious about making hyperbolic claims.
On the flip side George Monbiot in his 17 August 2022 article offers a compelling argument that freeports, embryonic charter cities, “deliver nothing but harm” and “attract organised crime, money-laundering, drug-trafficking and terrorist finance, while bringing minimal benefits to the nations that host them”.
Despite Grey’s warnings, and in the spirit of hope for the best plan for the worst, I lean towards Monbiot’s understanding of charter cities. Whoever turns out to be correct, attacks on workers rights, all of our human rights, will continue under this Conservative government. And if we’re not careful, the worst excesses of libertarian free-market thinking will have us tugging our forelock in feudal deference.
This story from Reuters announcing “Facebook parent Meta to settle Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725” million has me wondering. Can Facebook be sued for their part in securing a leave win in the Brexit referendum?
It is my understanding that Dominic Cummings and Vote Leave took the information Cambridge Analytica scraped from Facebook, built detailed profiles of users, then targeted them with advertising designed to nudge voters in the 2016 referendum.
For those who think Facebook’s reach and impact is negligible, just another silly social media platform, consider this. 17,410,742 people voted to leave the European Union, compared to the 16,141,241 who voted to remain. That’s a difference of 1,269,501 people. Vote Leave won by nudging the attitudes and opinions of at least, but probably more than, 1.25 million people. The thing is, that’s only 2.82% of the 45 million people it’s estimated use Facebook in the United Kingdom. I also think it significant that the total electorate, those who voted in the referendum, was only 1,501,241 more than the total number of UK Facebook users.
Personally, I think the platform allowed itself to be used by Cummings and Vote Leave to reach and influence enough of the electorate, personally and specifically, to swing the vote their way. Facebook certainly took the money and ran the adverts without worrying about intention or means. I also think the picture is more complicated than simply targeting Facebook users with adverts that confirm an individual’s prejudices and trigger their fears. They also used targeted advertising to convince the apathetic or complacent, that leave could never win, nothing ever changes, so why bother voting at all. Turnout for the referendum was 72.2%, comparatively high when seen against the 2019 General Election at 67.3%. That’s a difference of 4.9%. Significant, in a conspiratorial kind of way, when you realise Vote Leave only won with a majority of 4%.
If you don’t believe me, and why would you, could you, should you, watch Dominic Cummings explain in his own words, “Why Leave Won the Referendum”. He gave this talk at the Ogilvy Nudgestock event in 2017. Nudgestock calls itself a festival of “behavioural science and creativity” that provides “science-led evaluation and optimization of nudge strategies, ideas and campaigns designed to change perception and behaviour”.
All of this sounds to me like psychological warfare, employed against the population of the United Kingdom, for political and economic gain.
The UK energy market is broken. But rather than taking this opportunity to fix it, make it better for everyone, these myopic stone trolls put private business ahead of public good, and pledge “up to £4.5bn to fund Bulb takeover by Octopus”. When we need people with vision, ideas, imagination, we get tired dogma.
Warzel thinks Musk’s far-right activism lacks “a strong political ideology or value system”. Instead it’s motivated “by the accumulation of money” and “being perceived as a visionary”.
For me that drops Musk into the narcissistic and opportunistic mould of Trump, rather than ideological zealot, making the outcome and means far more dangerous.
Shocked but not surprised by David Conn and Paul Lewis’ story in The Guardian. It’s the first in what I think will be a long line of stories exposing corrupt deals made under cover of the pandemic.
Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband, Douglas Barrowman, have some serious questions they’re refusing to answer.
I had to drive around the Battersea Power Station development recently. It’s impressive, very futuristic, in a retro kind of way. A long way from derelict hole it was for so long.
The scale and isolated nature of the site, the way it’s cut off from everything around it, puts me in mind of High-Rise by JG Ballard. It’s a pocket of ultra-wealth that makes a wealthy part of south London feel poorer.
When society eventually collapses, this place, these people, will first pull up the drawbridge, cut itself off from everyone, then go feral just as they do in High-Rise.
Liberty has achieved a landmark victory against the government. High Court of Justice ruled it is unlawful for the security services MI5, MI6, and GCHQ to obtain an individuals communications data from telecom providers without having prior independent authorisation.
Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, uses the concept of a “dark triad” of three personality traits… psychopathy, narcissism and machiavellianism” to describe Boris Johnson.
Taylor’s thesis is a litany of “unpalatable” behaviours and personality traits, that shouldn’t be anywhere near the seat of power, let alone sitting on it.
What if an incompetent government screwed up your life, and tried to get you killed as they did it, what would that look like?
Perhaps we’d watch them stagger through this COVID-19 crisis like Stone Trolls trying to escape the sun. Lumbering panicked from one broken promise to another.
How would you feel if the government lied, and lied again, treating every citizen with the kind of contempt you might have for the gob of gum stuck to your shoe?
What kind of person would lead this chaos? He’d have to be someone unwilling to face and average person, look them in the eye, and speak from the heart.
The Stone Troll’s heart is a purely functional organ. Something so tough it can’t be scratched by emotions like shame or regret, compassion or humility.
If we had a government like that, we might look at their stage managed announcements and ask, why do they rattle past so quickly? Why do they go by unchallenged?
Would it be ruthless to think they’re hiding something? They must think we’re fools? Why else would they present failures as success, and expect us not to notice.
I might respond by calling them cowards, or point out their arrogance. I’m guessing their replies would let me know, they see us as weak, infantilising us for their own benefit.
Why would any government think of its citizens as children? Perhaps they want us to treat them as a parent, a strict and infallible patriarch, there to scold us, tell us what to do?
If that’s how it is, I want to know, has the tail always wagged the dog? And if the government’s wagging its citizens, we’re not living in a democracy, we’re living in a system of oligarchy, where the many are ruled by the few.
A government like that might think we should take the virus on the chin, to “protect the economy!” If that’s their priority it might be reasonable, under the enormous pressure of a pandemic, to feel like their “democracy” might falter.
People might realise who the government is really serving. To protect itself a government might be forced to respond, rationalise a system wide collapse, and offer to pay a companies staff, so they can implement a lockdown.
Win. Win. Protect the interests of the oligarchy while maintaining the illusion of democracy.
If that lockdown continued, how long before the mouthpieces for the few start agitating for a return to business?
Would the government relax the order to stay at home, knowing people will mix, and contract, and spread the virus? Is it wrong to think they’d put everyone at risk in this way?
The Stone Trolls in government see us as feckless children too stupid to stand on our own two feet. If they thought something different, they’d maintain a lockdown until the danger had passed.
Which leaves one final question. What’s the point of government if all they do is service the needs of the few?
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