US Opioid firms Too Big to Jail
HSBC are well known for making their money selling Opium in China in the 19th Century. But now in the 21st Century US corporations are openly selling death on the streets of America — and getting away with it. I’m not talking guns. We’re talking painkillers. Four firms just settled for hundreds of millions of […]
Privately run care home hits the skids
Care firm condemned again Cygnet Health Care condemned again Staff snoozed and patients’ rooms were bare or smelt of urine at a psychiatric hospital run by a healthcare company that was forced in May to shut another site.Newbus Grange in Darlington, which houses men with autism, learning disabilities and complex needs, has been rated inadequate […]
Ursula Von der Leyen’s gender balanced pro-war pro-austerity European Commission
Sajid (or Dom’s) splurge, Archbishop of Canterbury’s flip, & more
Oliver’s Army … Here to Stay
The BBC portray Oliver Letwin as a ‘Tory Rebel’ simply because he says he opposes a No Deal Brexit. The BBC propaganda machine struggles with nuance. Sir Oliver is an Etonian, just like Kwasi Kwarteng, Rees Mogg, Jo, & Boris (The White Kwasi) Kemal “Johnson”. A passionately pro-privatisation man — does anyone believe Letwin would prefer […]
The Economic Consequences of Castration
You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. That must be what audience members thought when they listened to the amazing sound of the last castrato, Alessandro Moreschi. Britain was castrated by the European Union which emasculated it and then impregnated the remnants of its being with its own ideas. Such is the horror […]
5G vs Climate Change
Do we feel climate change or 5G is more of a thing? twitter.com/akshatrathi/status/1124754851886522368 & what steps can we take to mitigate? In the attention war, in which meaningless as well as meaningful nuance, gets freely deployed, all options are always on the table. The engineering of consent is still a thing. And to oppose certain […]
Assange’s Extradition Matters
Julian Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London this morning. WATCH: Moment Julian Assange is CARRIED out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. pic.twitter.com/OEeqmoksGr — RT UK (@RTUKnews) April 11, 2019 He is being charged with not attending court, in relation to dropped Swedish sexual assault claims, and attempting to decrypt classified US […]
Radical Centre, Extinction Rebellion, Green New Deal
The Radical Centre Radix, which has a piece in today’s City AM, is a radical centre think tank. But what does the radical centre stand for? A glance at the Radix website tells me Market Fundamentalism – but not soft on Ireland. An Irish hard border is inevitable to protect the single market from toxic […]
Inside the Mind of Tom Watson
Media Democracy Tackling big tech and democratizing journalism were the main topics I took from this year’s Media Democracy Festival in London this Saturday. These things are planned long in advance so I shouldn’t expect people who have been preparing talks on structural problems in the media to have an entire programme based on very […]
The Great British Fraud Machine
Conspiracy The BBC, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), & Financial Conduct Authority have conspired to criminally defraud, bankrupt and asset strip thousands of small businesses throughout the UK. New film Spank the Banker shows that other banks, including state-owned Lloyd’s, have also engaged in financial terrorism against British business. Though the banks’ and the financial […]
The Public Interest
Although it is a term with which many of us are now familiar, The Public Interest, was, once upon a time, much contested. But, at this point, a few hundreds later, some of the settlements that were arrived at during the English Civil War need to be reviewed. In particular the notion of the Public […]
A broken clock is right at least twice a day
A broken clock is right at least twice a day It’s no secret that the Morning Star swings to the left. And one shouldn’t belittle its fantastic work highlighting underrepresented points of view. But it’s quite remarkable when the newspaper it is most in sync with is … The Sun. Obviously a constellational thing. Many […]
Trip to Trumpton
US Social Commentator HL Mencken once said “No-one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American People”. What in the UK would be classed as a hate crime, turned out to be one of Trump’s greatest performances. Today’s mass shooting at an American Synagogue can only be responded to by a message of hope. […]
Nudged in New Cross
Behaviouralist Bants So I thought Skinner was the bad guy. The really mechanistic one. Or was it Watson? Who said we are basically all the same and that our feelings and personal stories don’t really matter. That there is no such thing as experience. That we are all automatons. The one who put his daughter […]
Crafty Californian Shadow Bankers Fleece Poor
Friday’s American Banker highlights extortionate interest rates charged by 20 non-bank lenders in California. I wonder who these firms are. The American Banker says they are non-banks. Licensed to lend but basically unregulated. Steering broke citizens toward high interest loans. The sites that hook the borrowers in are called “Lead Generators”. Is this happening in […]