This came through yesterday from the Megaphone, the internet information branch of the TUC.
‘On Tuesday we handed in over 36,000 petition signatures to the UK government in both London and Edinburgh, calling on politicians to rule out any further pension age rises in the next Parliament.
The same week, BP and Shell announced their first quarters profits amounting to well over 10 billion pounds combined. Profiteering by oil and gas companies is driving up the cost of living. Why should workers be made to pay for this crisis?
Take action: please share this video on Twitter and Facebook.
Workers create the wealth in this society, and we demand our share of that wealth in our old age.
68 is too late!
Not a union member yet? Join Unite today – open to everyone in work, out of work, students and retired.‘
Excellent video by the Left-wing group Led By Donkeys which shows the pervasive connections between the former Prime Minister, swivel-eyed Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and her cabinet and the mad, free enterprise groups located at or near 55 Tufton Street. These include the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Taxpayers Alliance. These groups are all in favour of privatisation, including that of the NHS, tax cuts for the rich and the ending of the welfare state. One of them also pumps out propaganda against global warming and climate change. Truss herself set up a Free Enterprise Group with the assistance of the IEA, and the group as how morphed into another organisation with a similar name, linked to them. Truss was among the authors of the noxious Britannia Unchained, which claimed that British workers were the laziest in the world and demanded more cuts and privatisation for the rich and that workers should be stripped of their rights. All of them were connected to the Tufton Street network. Kings College, Oxford, held a debate about whether the NHS should be privatised, put forward by one of the inmates of the IEA. And when one journalist asked them if Truss had handed the government over to the Tufton Street thinktanks, she was told ‘Yes’.
These organisations are very secretive and won’t disclose who funds them. Some of them received donations from BP, others from the tobacco industry. A number of them are American organisations. But for the most part, their donors are unknown. The video points out that nobody elected Truss except 0.1 per cent of the population, and her tax cuts benefited only 2,500 millionaires. It is for their benefit that she trashed the economy, an event Led By Donkeys commemorated by sticking a mock blue plaque about it on the front of 55 Tufton Street.
Their ideas don’t work and the economic collapse they caused showed they are catastrophic. But nevertheless, they benefit the rich and so the Conservative right definitely won’t question them, even when the force everyone else into poverty.
The Tories really are slave-driving sadists. Apart from the unemployed, there’s a real hatred of the sick and disabled, who they also consider to be workshy scroungers. I got this message the other day from the internet petitioning organisation 38 Degrees, asking me to sign a petition against their latest wheeze. There’s a bill going through parliament at the moment that’s gone under the radar, but if passed would force doctors to find suitable work to do for sick people rather than signing them off. I think they’ve tried something like that ages ago. I remember them trying to pass some kind of law to prevent doctors signing people off work. Anyway, it seems they’re going back to it with a vengeance. However, this mentality is actually crippling industry as well as workers. Presenteeism is the state where unwell employees nevertheless have to, or feel they have to come into work. This obviously spreads the disease and doesn’t contribute to efficiency. I can remember reading a piece about it a few years ago, which demolished the Tory policy of forcing people to work even so unwell that they really need time off. But the Tory party is so thick and vindictive that this has obviously gone way over their Eton-educated bonces. Here’s the message
‘David, this new plan from the Government to interfere when we’re sick is unbelievable. GPs would be told not to sign people off sick from work, and instead tell them to find ways to work through illness. [1]
The Government says it’s to help boost the economy, but targeting sick people – instead of corporations like BP and Centrica that have made billions in profit – is cruel and short-sighted. [2]
Luckily we have a chance to stop it. It’s one of many ideas being considered ahead of next month’s budget. And the Government will be watching closely to see how people react. So we have a chance to shoot it down before it becomes anything worse than a bad idea thrown around in a cabinet meeting.
So far it’s not made many headlines or gotten much attention so the Government might think they can get away with it. A huge petition signed by over 49,000 people, is calling out this terrible idea to be dropped before the budget. But we’ll need more people to add their name if we are going to get them to listen.
So David, if you think doctors, not ministers, should make decisions about what happens when we’re sick, sign the petition today. It takes just 30 seconds and we’ll make sure it gets on the radar of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt:
This is another message I got yesterday. However, I’m not on Twitter, Whatsapp or Facebook, so I’m sharing it here, and letting those who are on those social media share it if they wish.
‘Dear David,
Today Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt announced their plan for ordinary people to pay for the cost of living crisis while the rich get richer.
You know this is wrong. There is another way – and taking our energy into public ownership should be top of the list.
That’s why you signed the petition calling for public ownership of energy NOW! Can you share the petition to show Sunak and Hunt that the public sees through their spin?
While millions of us struggle to afford food or heating, Moët, the luxury champagne brand, has announced unprecedented demand.
So who’s popping champagne corks right now? It’s the shareholders who own our privatised utilities and services.
This quarter BP raked in a whopping £6.9bn, and Shell has taken £26bn this year. Meanwhile, millions of us are holding off turning the heating on in the face of astronomical bills.
Today Hunt announced that the windfall tax on energy company profits will be raised to 35%, but this is nowhere near enough. From April, the government is raising the energy price cap to £3,000 – meaning households spend even more on bills.
This is the moment to let as many people know as possible that it doesn’t have to be this way.
By sharing the petition calling for public ownership of energy, you can make it clear that there is a real alternative. Right now, the government has the power to:
Introduce a permanent windfall tax on oil and gas companies like Shell and BP, at a rate of 56% (on top of corporation tax)
Stop wasting money bailing out failing energy supply giants – set up a publicly owned energy supplier instead
Bring the privatised monopolies of the National Grid and regional distribution into public ownership
Set up a new state-owned renewable energy company to help tackle the climate crisis
Sunak and Hunt think they can get away with their choice to protect profits over people. By demanding an alternative, you can show them that the public sees right through this!
We will only get louder with our call for public ownership as the real solution. 66% of the public already agree – let’s get that even higher.
THANK YOU for signing and sharing the petition. Together we’re reaching more people every day, challenging the stories told by politicians and companies.
You’re helping to spread the message that public ownership is the answer, not austerity.
Solidarity,
Cat, Alice, Matthew, Kate and Johnbosco – The We Own It team
I found this on the Community page of the right-wing YouTube channel Correct Not Political. They seem to be a group of right-wingers who go around staging counter protests or demonstrations at left-wing events. They’ve been demonstrating at the recent Pride marches, Drag Queen Story Hour, also against Extinction Rebellion, anti-racism marches for refugees and they also seem to be militant anti-vaxxers. One of their collections of videos is simply titled ‘Socialists and Commies’. But they posted this about ordinary people struggling with poverty while the fuel and water companies make hugely inflated profits.
Well after yesterdays announcement from the Bank of England , there is something very very very wrong in the system… So… let me get this straight:
* British Gas made a profit of £1.3bn between January & June
* BP announced profits of £6.95 billion between April and June alone
* Shell has profited by £9.4bn in a year
The MEN at the top:
* John Pettigrew, boss of National Grid received £6.5m bonus on top of his salary
* Chris O’Shea, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica was paid almost £2m last year in salary and benefits
* Centrica’s non-executive directors were paid almost £1m
* Scottish Power’s CEO Keith Anderson is on £1.15m.
* E.On boss Michael Lewis is on £1m
* EDF’s Simone Rossi is also on £1m
* And their top execs enjoyed a share of £4.65m
* Peter Simpson of Anglian Water earned a £1.3m pay package
* Welsh Water bosses awarded themselves bonuses of over £930,000
* Severn Trent bosses awarded themselves bonuses of £5.56m
* Thames Water’s Sarah Bentley, received a £727,000 bonus on top of her £2m annual salary
Meanwhile there are…
* People who haven’t had breakfast and/or lunch TODAY, because they can’t afford it.
* People using FoodBanks because food is becoming more of a luxury than a necessity.
* Children celebrating a birthday without presents.
* Parents worrying about new school uniforms – and some schools enforcing rules which are not cost-effective.
* People who can’t get to work because they can’t afford to put petrol in their cars/pay for public transport anymore.
* People who are working so much they’re making themselves ill, and they STILL CAN’T AFFORD to pay their bills.
* People who have been given fines by these same energy/water companies because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills in the first place – increasing their debt.
* Customers being told to do STAR JUMPS TO KEEP WARM for crying out loud!
* Hose pipe bans when gallons of water leak away everyday.
* Elderly people NOT DRINKING because they’re worried about running out of water!!!
All this and energy prices are set to rise up to 75% in October…
THIS IS MADNESS!.. I’m all for supporting profits ..I’m not for supporting greed at the cost of lives of others..
Something needs to change.. Why are customers’ money being used to make life more comfortable for those who are making life more intolerable for the rest of us?
I actually don’t understand how the energy companies are allowed to get away with this and why the government aren’t stopping them instead of handing out money…..
Copied & pasted from others. Keep this going around for all to see’
I’ve got absolutely no problem posting this up despite where it comes from. Because these profiteers do need to be named and shamed. And this whole scam is why the public utilities need to be nationalised, so that they work for this great country’s people rather than exploiting them.
I got the email below from Avaaz, another internet demography. They were polling responses to a suggested policy that the oil and fossil fuel companies now making obscene profits while the rest of us are facing escalating costs of living, should be taxed more in order to protect the most vulnerable communities and the environment.
‘Dear David,
Today, we’d love to know your opinion!
Could you read the email below, and let us know if you’re supporting Avaaz to run this campaign?
While the world cooks, Big Oil is making more money than ever – four fossil fuel giants made a combined total of $51billion in just three months!
That’s double what they were making a year ago – resulting from sky-high oil and gas prices driven by the war in Ukraine. One oil boss described his company as ‘literally a cash machine’!
This ‘machine’ is killing the planet, stealing our future, and driving millions into poverty. It has to stop. The UN Secretary-General has just called on all governments to tax these obscene profits – and use the money for the good of society.
Let’s echo his call, demanding a tax on fossil fuel profits so the money can be spent on protecting the most vulnerable communities and urgently investing in renewable energy – when we hit a million, we’ll deliver our call directly to governments at a major UN summit in September!
With hope and determination,
Bert, Patricia, Stefanie and the rest of the Avaaz team
For me, there’s absolutely no question: I strongly support this proposal. Because it absolutely obscene that companies like BP are raking in £9 billion while ordinary people are looking at starvation and being unable to heat their homes.
And it says everything about the complacency and profiteering of one Jacob Rees-Mogg of Bath and North-East Somerset that he defended these companies on BBC Radio and their giving dividends while ordinary people suffer.
Well, it’s the council elections today and that’s one of the reasons I’m putting up these left-wing, socialist and simply anti-Tory music videos and mash-ups. This one’s by Cassetteboy, and makes their views about the sheer vileness of the Conservatives very clear. It begins by stating that according to the polls, Johnson should be on the dole and the elections are a good way to give them rejection. It points out his and his party’s connection to Putin through Russian donors, has a dig at them for watching porn in the commons, before then going on to condemn them for rising energy costs. Ordinarily people freeze ’cause they can’t pay their energy bills, but the Tories keep their money safe in offshore accounts so they don’t pay tax and certainly aren’t going to tax BP and the rest of the oil companies for the massive profits they’re making. It talks about them scuttling off to Russia, and Priti Patel wanting to lock us all up if we demonstrate and send us to Rwanda. It concludes with Johnson stating openly that you shouldn’t vote for any of them, because they’re all the same.
Appearing in the video and having their words and speeches edited to create this indictment are Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and others.
I got this email from the pro-NHS, pro-nationalisation organisation We Own It Wednesday night. It’s a petition appealing to the government to nationalise the energy companies as a response to the massive rise in electricity bills. The email runs
Our energy system is broken.
Your energy bills are expected to go up by nearly £700 in April. While companies like BP are reporting eye watering profits of £9.5 billion!
But energy could work in public ownership for people and the planet – not profit.
We are calling on Rishi Sunak as the chancellor and Kwasi Kwarteng as the minister for energy to end the chaos in our energy system and commit to bringing energy into public ownership by the 1st of April.
By signing our petition you can tell Rishi Sunak and Kwasi Kwarteng to bring energy into public ownership now.
The eye watering profits of companies like BP are an outrage.
Since 2010 BP has handed out almost £200 billion pounds in profit to shareholders while right now 6 million households in the UK are facing fuel poverty.
It really doesn’t have to be like this.
In countries like Norway, oil and gas companies pay a corporation tax of 22% AND a special tax at the rate of 56% upwards!
The Norwegian state owns Statkraft, the largest renewables generator in Europe. While Denmark owns 50% of Ørsted which is the world’s largest developer of offshore wind power.
These are sensible, tried and tested solutions that we know can get to the root of the problem.
You can join the thousands of others calling for urgent action instead of more government sticking plasters.
Sign and share our petition and tell Rishi Sunak and Kwarsi Kwarteng that now really is the time to bring energy into public ownership.
Thank you for your support with this campaign and let’s start the fight to bring these essential public assets back into our hands.
Solidarity’
I’ve signed it, as this is further proof that the Thatcherite privatisation of the utilities has been a massive failure. It hasn’t brought the investment Thatcher expected it would and has, as this email shows, led simply to massive profiteering. The energy companies also know they are extremely vulnerable to this criticism, as an executive from one of them was on TV the other day blustering about welcoming government regulation while fervently denying that the government could run industry. Anyone who believed that, he sneered, was stupid. If so then 50 per cent of the British population were stupid even under Thatcher, as the support for her privatisations never went above that level. And since then more people want to see the utilities renationalised. It was a central plank for Corbyn’s programme and remains extremely popular. Which is why the Blairites and the Tories could only combat it by smearing him as a Communist anti-Semite.
Thatcherism is zombie economics, a shuffling, putrefying corpse whose dead hand is holding Britain back and its people in poverty. It’s long past time it was consigned to the dustbin and reversed.
End privatisation; end energy poverty; renationalise the utilities!
I found this grimly fascinating video on the YouTube channel for Gravitas, which I think is the news programme of the Indian WION – World Is One – network. The anchor woman considers the prediction by a Canadian academic that American democracy is in crisis and that the country will have a right-wing dictator by 2030. This will follow a period of civil disturbances in 2025. America is becoming more polarised. 64 per cent of Americans believe democracy is in crisis, according to polls, and 66 per cent of Republicans that the last election was rigged. 70 per cent of Americans also believe that democracy is failing. And 66 per cent believe that violence against the government is justified. These views explains the attack on Congress by Trump’s supporters last year, and there’s a prediction that the Orange Buffoon will return in 2024. At the same time, White nationalism is on the rise. She states that democracies dies through a deeply polarised society and distrust of government. She also claims that White supremacy is rising in the US army, aided by legislation that does not forbid squaddies from joining Fascist organisations like the Klan. She is careful to say, however, that she is not claiming soldiers are joining these organisations.
She also notes that last year America was put on a list of different nations as a ‘backsliding democracy’. If the attempted invasion of congress that occurred precisely a year ago, on 6th January 2021, had happened in west Asia (the Middle East) or Latin America, the US would, she claims, have sent in the CIA and a couple of thousand marines ‘to restore democracy’. She goes on to say that for decades, democracy has been whatever America says it is. There are many examples of this American arrogance. One report says that the US tried to topple Latin American regimes 41 times in the 20th century. The US funded juntas and plotted assassinations,. Another example is the CIA-funded overthrow of the last democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, backing the Shah. No-one asked them to do it, certainly not the Iranian people, ‘but that’s what America is for you’. America interferes because it can. It overthrew the Taliban in 2001, which was great, but their next step was to impose their presidential system on a country with more than a hundred ethnicities taking no account of tribal loyalties. The problem is the attitude that the American system suits all peoples ‘but democracy doesn’t work that way’. She concludes ‘So this prophecy of American collapse is karma, plain and simple.’
It’s a blistering attack on post-Trump division and the emerging far right in America, as well as American imperialism from the perspective of the Developing World. And she is absolutely correct. The late, long-term critic of American imperialism, William Blum, lists all the countries, whose governments the US has overthrown and in whose elections they have interfered in his books. The list and its brief descriptions of American meddling, take up two whole chapters each. America, and also Britain, did overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mossedeq in the 1953 because he nationalised the oil industry. This was then owned and controlled by foreign companies, like BP, which employed Iranian workers on much lower wages and with poorer conditions than westerners. As for Afghanistan, the country, like others in the region, is a mosaic of different tribal and ethnic groups. It has no tradition of western-style democracy, and the president the Americans and the west back, Hamid Karzai, was massively corrupt. And the corruption reached all the way down through his regime and the new state to exploit and alienate ordinary Afghans. The result was the rapid collapse of Karzai’s government and the seizure of power by the Taliban almost as soon as American troops departed. In Iraq too George W. Bush and the other Neo-Cons had absolutely no idea about the society they had invaded and were trying to remodel. They believed the lies of Ahmed Chalabi, that he led a massive resistance movement against Hussein and that he and the American troops would be welcomed with flowers as liberators. Worse, the Neo-Cons actively resented and removed officials and senior military leaders, who attempted to tell them they were wrong. General Zilli, the head of the Middle East section of the Pentagon, was given the boot because he dared to do so.
As for the type of democracy the Americans wanted to introduce into Iraq, this was a very narrow version governed by Neo-Con doctrine. The government was to be democratic, but it was to be constitutionally prevented from interfering in business or private industry. It was democracy, but only as far as big business and American corporate interests allowed it.
As for the assertion that the collapse of American democracy and the emergence of a right-wing dictator is karma, I think left-wing political commenters like Noam Chomsky and the peeps at the radical magazine and website, Counterpunch, have said that America is suffering from imperial blowback. The tactics it has used to destabilise foreign regimes are now coming back to be used against America’s own citizens. And because of the powerful corporate influence on American politics, Harvard University several years ago described America, not as a democracy, but as an oligarchy.
There are deep divisions in current American politics between Trump’s supporters on the right, who include White supremacists, and the radical left, as shown in the rise of Black Lives Matter. Some of the BLM protests and demonstrations have degenerated into destruction and rioting, and in the most extreme example an anarchist community rejecting the American state emerged, only to collapse into violent anarchy in the pejorative sense and be retaken by local law enforcement. This has created a sense of crisis on the American right, while the invasion of congress looks very much like an attempted coup, comparable to Mussolini’s March on Rome. I am not surprised that many Americans feel their democracy is failing.
I don’t want American democracy to collapse. I believe that Fascism and dictatorship has to be fought everywhere in the world, and an America dominated by a dictator would be horrific, not just for the country but also for the rest of the world. American democracy needs to be supported.
It just shouldn’t impose dictatorships or its very contrived versionof democracy on everyone else.
Sufism is Islamic mysticism. It’s all about achieving a mystical union with the Almighty, and it’s organised into various orders and brotherhoods rather like western monasticism. The orders are led by a shaykh, a spiritual leader, and they use different methods of achieving the state of mystical union. Some use music, while others, like the famous Whirling Dervishes of Istanbul, revolve in a kind of mystic dance. It can be a very syncretistic form Islam, taking elements from other faiths. I found this peculiar video on YouTube from the Muhammadan Way Sufi Realities channel on YouTube. Entitled ‘Why Reptilian Jinn Posses Members of the Elite? Shapeshifters Archon Annunaki Sufi Meditation Center’, it seems to show very strongly the influence of western UFO conspiracy theories, particularly about reptoid aliens popularised by David Icke.
The shaykh in the video, who seems to be based in Los Angeles, is responding to a question about reptoids. However, he regards them not as aliens, as per Icke and the western UFO peeps, but as a particular variety of the djinn. The djinn are supernatural creatures in Islam, created by Allah out of smokeless fire. They live for many hundreds or thousands of years. Like humans, they are of different religions, so that there are Muslim, Christians and Jewish djinn, but they also have supernatural powers. Shaitan, or Satan, the Devil, is one of these djinn in Islam and not a fallen angel as in Judaism and Christianity. The shaykh answers the question by telling his followers and viewers that these reptoid djinn get sent to possess the rich and elite in what sounds like a Faustian bargain with them. This may physically affect the possessed person, with them losing their head and body hair. It is through such possessions that the Devil gains control of businesses and corporations, including the music industry. Thus the aspiring musicians that sign on to record and music companies owned and controlled by those possessed by the reptilian djinn are rewarded with audiences of tens of thousands and become immensely wealthy.
I find it interesting as it appears to be a particularly Muslim form of two conspiracy theories that have been going round the west for decades. One is the belief, formulated by David Icke, that the world’s elite, the rich and powerful, are really reptoid aliens. The other is that there is a Satanic conspiracy within the music industry, and all the stories and urban legends about various pop bands, mostly Rock and Heavy Metal, being really Satanists and including secret satanic messages, recorded backwards, on their records and CDs.
John Simpson, one of the Beeb’s foreign correspondents, wrote an excellent book on Iran a few years ago. He noted that the Iranian people, whom he loved and respected, were very inclined towards conspiracy theories. I think that probably comes from the country’s long history of authoritarian rule, first as an absolute monarchy and then as a repressive Islamic theocracy. I think it’s also the product of the vast changes the country has experienced as it made the transition from a traditional, agricultural economy to a modern, mass, industrial society accompanied by rapid westernisation. These changes caused immense social stresses and bewilderment, with the new values often in conflict with traditional attitudes and made worse by the shah’s brutal personal rule. The shah gradually assumed total political control of the country during his White Revolution following the CIA-organised coup against Mohammed Mossadeq. Mossadeq was the last democratically elected prime minister of Iran, and was overthrown because he dared to nationalise the oil industry and run it for Iranians rather than it’s foreign owners, like BP. As the shah became more dictatorial and autocratic, so dissent increased until it culminated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It’s to be expected that conspiracy theories should arise in a society where there is no freedom of speech experiencing rapid change, and where a significant section of the population believe this is out of their control and orchestrated not for their benefit, but instead by mysterious, malign outsiders. I also have the impression that other parts of the Muslim world, like Pakistan, are also prone to conspiracy theories for much the same reason.
International trade, migration, telecommunications and the internet has brought the world closer together, and so weird conspiracy theories in one part of the planet can spread to the others, which may interpret them according to their own culture and beliefs.
Thus David Icke’s reptoid aliens have instead become reptoid djinn, who are seeking to lead humanity away from God through the music industry.
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