#Budget #UKPolitics This article by Gary Stevenson is so good, please read every word of it.

“Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it.”

This is what the world is - it is run by a minute elite for a minute elite and the rest of us, the masses, the natural world, we just don’t count. It is a #TragedyOftheNonCommons (will reshare my own piece on this below 1/n)

#FollowTheMoney

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/05/banker-budget-mega-rich-traders-jeremy-hunt?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Take it from a former banker: the budget is for ordinary people. The mega-rich look on and laugh

Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it, says the author Gary Stevenson

The Guardian
Pauline von Hellermann (@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

Attached: 1 image I've just published my first ever blog: "The Tragedy of the Non-Commons" I wrote it in July, frustrated by a Twitter thread about how the Tragedy of the #Commons continues to be taught at universities. I then left it (it's somewhat experiemental) but with #COP27 and #Twittermigration coinciding this week, I just wanted it to be out there. Would love for it to be shared here on our #digitalcommons and grateful for any comments https://medium.com/@p.vonhellermann/the-tragedy-of-the-non-commons-4bfad884cdbe

Mastodon.green

3/n Have decided to turn this into a #FollowTheMoney 🧵, collecting pieces on how money flows in our system- more and more towards those already rich. As Kelsey McKenney, in this piece on #Hollywod, writes:

“The reality is that the people with the most money have devised, at every turn, new and more bulletproof ways for them to make and keep more money, and for the people who make things to make less. This is the eternal story of labor and management.”

https://defector.com/the-money-is-in-all-the-wrong-places

The Money Is In All The Wrong Places | Defector

You can always tell who in Hollywood has family money by their Instagrams. People like Dakota Johnson, who have a Hollywood lineage deeper than the Mariana Trench, post only rarely. They post about social justice causes they care about, or personal announcements. Even someone like actress and musician Maya Hawke mostly posts previews of upcoming […]

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 4/n

This is happening in creative industries, in higher education, in literature: the more “content” - a lecture, an article, a role in a film - becomes a commodity divorced from its creators, the less creators themselves are paid and valued; they are workers, labourers like everyone else, the value of whose labour gets extracted by capital.

Capitalism isn’t over, replaced by #technofeudalism as some of claimed; it’s in full swing, in its purest form.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 5/n Adding here a piece a group of us co-wrote at an #anthropology
workshop, on “Understanding Growth”. This was experimental - co-writing on the spot! -, but i do come back to it: we distinguish between“Growth rooted in life” from “growth rooted in numbers”. Capitalism is pure number thinking.

Obviously there are many real experts on all this (Marx, Pikkety for a start), this piece is left field! But just thought of it again in this context.

https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2023/10/26/anthropology-and-degrowth-where-to-next/

Anthropology and Degrowth: Where to Next? - Undisciplined Environments

Why should Anthropology engage with Degrowth, and why should Degrowth engage with Anthropology?  This blog offers a set of reflections around these questions, based on the contributions to the workshop “Anthropology and Degrowth: Deepening the dialogue”.

Undisciplined Environments

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 6/n This is important: in contrast to most other Central Banks, which simply sit out losses, the Bank of England has an indemnity arrangement requiring the Treasury to cover its losses. This has resulted in £38-£40 billion going in effect from taxpayers to private banks in 2023, and same this year. Adding a second hashtag: #SEEtheOligarchy

FT article only for subscribers, I know (i get it through work). Here screenshots of key passages.

https://on.ft.com/4bUtp80

The Bank of England is misusing its fiscal powers

Unwinding QE must not be allowed to tie the hands of Government

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 7/n Now something different - this really is a rag bag, really just adding things as they come along, occur to me, no careful crafting! Just things that enable you to trace and understand how money flows to the rich, how accumulation works. So here, a piece, with this fantastic map, of second homes in the UK, in #Cornwall in particular. Key arena of widening #WealthGap #Inequality

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/06/were-on-a-cliff-edge-cornish-village-where-52-of-houses-are-not-first-homes?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#SEEtheOligarchy

‘We’re on a cliff edge’: Cornish village where 52% of houses are not first homes

Scrapping furnished holiday lets regime will only ‘tinker’ with rentals problem, say people in Polruan

The Guardian

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 8/n Adding here a (somewhat sweary, apologies) Politics Joe interview with Gary Stevenson (see 1/n), talking about the rapid increase in inequality in the UK and the world, and also about how we need to make people SEE THIS. They need to realise that the reason their lives are shit, that they can't get houses, is growing inequality. Because the system is set up to make money flow to the rich. Everyone needs to understand this. #SEETheOligarchy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVvoyRpxG-A

The secret economics destroying Britain | Gary Stevenson interview

YouTube

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 9/n So far the has been more about who the money flows towards, but now also some posts about who it flows away from. Again, random collection, no comprensive analysis - just snippets of what’s going on!

Yesterday I listened to this really heartbreaking and deeply worrying programme about the rapid rise in bankruptcies in the UK. Of course we see this all around us - all those closing restaurants, Debenhams etc. the #DeathOfTheHighStreet speeding up

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001x55h?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Dead Company Walking - BBC Sounds

Businesses are failing at a rate not seen for years. What's gone wrong?

BBC
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 10/n But note the title ⬆️ - what is going on here? Turns out quite a bit of of the program was about how “Zombie firms”were kept alive artificially for years by low interest rates; that it’s good if they die and others take over. Really struck and appalled by utter coldness, distance and dehumanisation by people who say this - as @PippiPunkstrumpf just said, they really think of others just as numbers (see also our “Understanding Growth” piece above 5/n).

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 11/n Another key area money flows away from are local councils and social services and, therefore, the young and, again, community. In Birmingham, whose council declared bankruptcy in 2023, provisions for children will be cut by £52m in 2024-25 and £63m in 2025-26; youth services by £2.3m; and eleven community centres are being sold off. As John Harris says:

The state is abandoning its people

#UKPolitics #Birmingham #Austerity

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/17/birmingham-britain-state-cuts-austerity-local-services

Birmingham’s cuts reveal the ugly truth about Britain in 2024: the state is abandoning its people

First it was austerity. Now it’s something even worse: the suggestion that people didn’t need vital local services to begin with, says Guardian columnist John Harris

The Guardian

#FollowTheMoney 🧵12/n Of course, things were never rosy for everyone. Nevertheless, key shared assumptions about the #commongood informed post war public spending and that is all eroding now.

“Continuing austerity does not just kill people’s services; it has long since warped most political debates about what we should expect from the state. In lots of places, squalor, mess and festering social problems are now seen as the norm. “
#TheCrumble

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 13/n and i have to mention UK universities too, since I am directly affected myself (see #AcademicVenting).

40% of UK universities are in debt, with major reduncancies right now (incl at Goldsmiths). All in arts, humanities and social sciences. All of this is crumbling, with too little money flowing into it. Another industry, another #CommonGood
being eroded. Check out this constantly updated tally. #TheCrumble

https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/

UK HE shrinking

a live page of all the redundancies and restructures happening across UK Higher Education. Page is updated regularly.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 14/n Just realised the title of this really excellent article by Sam Knight is actually perhaps the real theme of this 🧵:

What Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule have Done to Britain

As Sam says, #Austerity is not even talked about so much anymore, but it has just broken the #UK . Please do read the whole piece, so well written, so damning (and I’ve even managed to ignore an aside criticism of Corbyn - usually makes me hate any writer! 😊)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 15/n

“The average worker is now £14,000 worse off per year than if earnings had continued to rise at pre-crisis rates—it is the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars. “Nobody who’s alive and working in the British economy today has ever seen anything like this. This is what failure looks like.” “

A Herefordshire case workers has developed a phrase to describe people needing help, “for her paperwork”:

“Overwhelming Distress”

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 16/n Back to who the money flows towards:

Nobody had a better year than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth has increased by more than any other billionaire, up by nearly $113 billion over the past 12 months, to an estimated $177 billion #AI #Meta

https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2024/04/02/tech-billionaires-have-added-an-astonishing-750-billion-to-their-fortunes-over-the-past-year/

Tech Billionaires Have Added An Astonishing $750 Billion To Their Fortunes Over The Past Year

The world’s wealthiest technology moguls have ridden the AI-fueled frenzy to never-before-seen heights.

Forbes

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 17/n and here the whole Forbes Rich List for 2024. The planet has a record 2,781 billionaires now who are worth a record $14.2 trillion.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2024/04/02/forbes-38th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-facts-and-figures-2024/

Forbes’ 38th Annual World’s Billionaires List: Facts And Figures 2024

Here’s who’s up, who’s down, who’s new and who’s off the yearly Forbes billionaires ranking.

Forbes

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 18/n

Spotify too. Everywhere money is being sucked out (or who has the agency here really? More in next post) from artists to billionaires

https://mstdn.ca/@ned/112249803518261424

Ned Yeung (@ned@mstdn.ca)

Attached: 1 image "Spotify’s CEO is now a billionaire but it takes artists 334 streams to make $1. The company just enacted a plan to completely demonetize smaller artists. Under the new policy, tracks that get under a certain threshold of annual streams will receive no money from the company. Groups like United Musicians and Allied Workers (ig: weareumaw) are fighting to save their industry." #Union #capitalism

Mastodon Canada

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 19/n

This is what I am thinking about now. Not at all the first to say this or even think it myself, but just to emphasise: better not to think of billionaires as evil scheming money grabbers - i mean, they are - but as vessels for money, capitalism itself. Like, sci-fi wise, human bodies that look like humans from the outside but have been taken over by an AI - money itself. And it’s ruling everything!

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/112251122729288252

Pauline von Hellermann (@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

#AcademicVenting That is what this is: we are governed by money itself, and it brings cruel unimaginative rightwing mediocrity to the top everywhere. (Second crossover with #FollowTheMoney 🧵 here!) Sadly forgotten name just now, (will edit), but remembering podcast with Cambridge prof saying people worry about being ruled by AI , nonhuman entities, but that is exactly what corporations are. Nonhuman entities are already running everything. https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/112047945347154458

Mastodon.green

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 20/n

Now really is the time of monsters. #Gramsci

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 21/n Suddenly remembered that at the end of 2022 I posted this here. So embarrassing - cringe, as my children would say! That I actually wrote “the new world is almost born”. No it’s not. The time of monsters is in full, full swing, the new world really is not born yet. All we can do is to keep on trying to organise to make it happen one day. #Gramsci

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109607575259368216

Pauline von Hellermann (@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

Attached: 1 image 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Schumacher’s 1973 book #SmallIsBeautiful. Let’s make it a turning point year for everyone recognising that indeed Small Is Beautiful, a year of #Transition towards #CommunityBuilding #Commoning, #Degrowth #AgroEcology #2023 1/5 The new world is almost born

Mastodon.green
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 22/n Last point and then I will stop for today: saw #Hamilton a few weeks ago and was really struck by how then it was possible to start a revolution, raise an army and WIN! Like, that would just be totally impossible now. The imbalance in military power, just as in wealth (and control over media etc etc) is just so VAST now. It’s impossible to beat. That’s why noone really even tries anymore.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 23/n. Sorry- one more! Just to end on a less bleak note: seeing this toot reminded me that, of course, that billionaire military might AI bleak dystopia is real,IS our world, but there is actually an even bigger reality here every day, in all of us, since forever. Which is that the vast majority of us humans basically just want a simple life, with family, friends, barbecues (ok maybe not perfect example but since it’s here). #FrugalAbundance

https://ohai.social/@archaeohistories/112251349725100974

Archaeo-Histories (@archaeohistories@ohai.social)

Attached: 1 image Stone cooking supports used to grill skewers of meat by Minoans on Santorini, 3600 years old. The line of holes in the base supplied coals with oxygen. Many consider modern "souvlaki" street kebabs a direct descendant of this portable food system. Museum of Prehistoric Thera, Greece #archaeohistories

ohai.social

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 24/n. Like, watching the blue tits busy building their nest in the box outside our kitchen window, feeding their young, flying back and forth: most of us humans are so much closer to them than to scheming billionaires.

And: this forever (i hope forever- in peril due to other!) reality - of birds, trees, parents hugging children, just enjoying being together - this is perhaps the real reality. Or at least always also there. Mustn’t forget!

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 25/n back to a reality most of us in the UK inhabit on a daily basis: the crumbling public sector. Found this report on NHS dentistry’s struggle for survival really very moving just now. #NHS #dentistry #UKpolitics

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001y0kf?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

A Dentist's Life - A Dentist's Life - BBC Sounds

How one community dentist is navigating the biggest crisis in dentistry in a generation.

BBC

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 26/n An outstanding review by Will Davies (my Goldsmiths colleague) of Brett Christopher’s “The Price is Wrong”: about our neoliberal political economy (using a Braudelian distinction btw “the market” and “capitalism” - SO useful) and how this explain why investments in fossil fuels continue to vastly outstrip those in renewables. Key point: Capitalism IS rent-seeking.
#ClimateEmergency

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n07/william-davies/antimarket

William Davies · Antimarket: Capitalism Decarbonised

When it’s capitalism that’s the problem, and not markets, the only alternative is post-capitalism. But the central...

London Review of Books
#FollowTheMoney 🧵27/n The piece btw contains a necessary critique of my sci-fi “money rules” take a few posts above. Although i still like the idea of all this being a kind of superorganism. But yes, it is about power - political economy, not just economy.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 28/n But honestly, just read this piece - everything in this 🧵 in one brilliant analysis. And, crucially, using to explain lack of climate action. This is what everyone, each one of us, needs to think about! “Ecologically speaking, neoliberalism couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

Here Christopher’s book itself:
The Price is Wrong. Why Capitalism Won’t Save The Planet.

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

The Price is Wrong

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 29/n Another overlap with #AcademicVenting 🧵- because it’s all of a piece! Because the crisis in HE is a key phenomenon in all this!

This great piece by Jessica Wildfire really needs to be read in full, but this extract most apt here:

“Universities aren't institutions of knowledge anymore. They're assets. They're revenue streams. If they're not generating money for the top, then they only pose a threat, and they have to be weakened and destroyed.”

https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/112359018143961300

Aral Balkan (@aral@mastodon.ar.al)

“A lot of rich people don’t actually want an education system or the educated population that would come along with it. Sure, it would be better for everyone. But it would also mean having to share, and these people have let their greed literally drive them insane.” https://www.okdoomer.io/im-a-professor-heres-why-im-walking-away-from-my-tenure/ 1/2

Aral’s fediverse server

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 30/n

Wow. As Bregman says: Stunning graph: the plummeting tax rates of the richest Americans. For the first time in history, billionaires have a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.

Look at 1980 - I do continue to think that *everything* could have been different if Carter hadn’t lost to Reagan.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 31/n I think the graph came from this New York Times piece but don’t have a subscription so can’t check.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/opinion/global-billionaires-tax.html

Opinion | It’s Time to Tax the Billionaires

Billionaires are experts at avoiding taxes. By banding together, countries can make them pay up.

The New York Times

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 32/n Watched “The Founder” on Netflix yesterday, about McDonalds. Really interesting- would recommend it. Particularly how the real breakthrough came when Kroc, advised by Sonneborn, went for real estate. Checked it on Wikipedia:

“McDonald's present-day real-estate holdings represent $37.7 billion on its balance sheet, about 99% of the company's assets and 35% of its annual gross revenue.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_McDonald%27s

History of McDonald's - Wikipedia

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 33/n

Today an overlap with #ClimateDiary: British farmers are struggling due to climate change, Brexit AND supermarket power:

Most farmers receive less than 1% of the profit made from the food they grow. Of the 20% food inflation experienced by the public a minuscule proportion made its way back to the farmer. Tesco made a £2.3bn profit last year, while 49% of fruit and veg farmers fear they’ll be out of business before the end of this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/08/british-farmer-food-climate-crisis-business?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I’m a British farmer. Here’s the scary truth about what’s happening to our crops

The climate crisis is making the farming business unsustainable – and without support for us, food security will suffer too, says Riverford founder Guy Singh-Watson

The Guardian

#FollowTheMoney 🧵34/n #ClimateDiary

We had a veg box for 12 years from Hankham Organics; 3 weeks ago we suddenly had a note with our box that they were closing, as it wasn’t working financially any more. 😢😢😢

And a fish merchant who we got smoked salmon for Christmas from closed this year too, for the same reasons. Plus Goldsmiths’ woes of course (#AcademicVenting). So many good, small organisations struggling and ending.

DB 🇵🇸 🌎🌏🌍 (@dbattistella@mstdn.ca)

Attached: 1 image Yeah, why are things... #Prices #News #Corporations #Monopolies

Mastodon Canada

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 36/n Here a positive, progressive use of money flows:

1400+ Columbia University alumni from its 20 schools have pledged to withhold all “financial, programmatic, and academic support” until school meets demands related to divestment, student discipline, and community safety.
Group website says over $63 million of donations at risk. #Gaza #studentprotests

#FollowTheMoney 🧵37/n

Even though all of us living in the UK know that homelessness is terrible (and has grown exponentially since 2010), it is still shocking to see this graph.

(There are notes on methods: all countries included both rough sleeping and invisible homelessness).

https://www.oecd.org/social/homelessness-country-notes.htm?utm_term=pac&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1-CorporatePriorityContent,2-Recovery%5BSupportingPublicandSocialPolicies%5D,3-ELS&utm_source=twitter

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 38/n

A rare silver lining to severe cuts in local council budgets: for the last few years Eastbourne have stopped spraying our streets and I love this time of year, flowers reclaiming the streets everywhere. #Rewilding #ClimateDiary

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 39/n

Have to add this here. The last 14 years summarised in 4 images #UKPolitics #GE2024

EDIT: here link itself too as images in screenshot i complete

https://x.com/ACORNunion/status/1793934201860792465

ACORN the union (@ACORNunion) on X

The last 14 years summarised in 4 images

X (formerly Twitter)

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 40/n haven’t added anything here in a while - but this needs to be posted!

Trump’s victory adds record $64bn to wealth of richest top 10

Share surge increases Elon Musk’s fortune by $26bn in a day as Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin and Bill Gates also benefit

#USelections2024

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/07/trump-victory-adds-record-wealth-richest-top-10?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Trump’s victory adds record $64bn to wealth of richest top 10

Share surge increases Elon Musk’s fortune by $26bn in a day as Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin and Bill Gates also benefit

The Guardian

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 41/n Ok so the reason for the long pause in this 🧵 was being made rdundant in July, by my lovely (not) employer of 13 years, Goldsmiths University. You can read all about it in this long #AcademicVenting 🧵, tracing the whole sorry saga from first rumblings in Nov ‘23 to the bitter end. But of course, #redundancy is all about money, and I think about money all the time now (I have to), so really should write it about it all here a bit

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/111563234050886278

Pauline von Hellermann (@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse. Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities #AcademicChatter #neoliberalism

Mastodon.green
#FollowTheMoney 🧵42/n Firstly, I am conscious of my own #redundancy being very much part of the wider hollowing out, draining out of both public services and professional, creative industries everywhere (see many posts ⬆️). I am really scared about this - it’s strange how this is happening but not really talked about; no #unemployment crisis narrative at all, as of course most people, like me, end up not being “unemployed” but doing smaller, precarious jobs; very few of us on benefiso no stats

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 43/n Now of course Elon Musk - having made 2/3 of Twitter staff redundant - has been hired by Trump to head the new “Efficiency Department”. i find this prospect alone deeply, deeply scary - both in terms of public services disappearing and the 1000s who will lose their jobs. As you all know: there is absolutely nothing “efficient” about these kinds of cuts whatsoever. They are deeply destructive, nothing else.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/trump-appoints-elon-musk-government-efficiency-department

Trump selects Elon Musk to lead government efficiency department

Musk and ex-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head up Department of Government Efficiency (Doge)

The Guardian

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 44/n but also: #Redundancy has made me think deeply (of course!) about the role of money in personal decision making. I may be wrong but it feels like this is something we don’t talk about much, and yet it is is so central to everything! I DO want to talk about it, even if I have nothing insightful to say actually. Just a few observations.

1. Money was at core of my decisions around redundancy. I have two teenage children and a high mortgage.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 45/n

I could not go for lovely 0.5 offered, or for tribunal; I had to opt for enhanced redundancy. If had chosen tribunal route i would have probably been able to keep my job as the 12 who did (who were able to do so due to different financial circumstances) were all reinstalled in an even lovelier deal btw management and union. (The 64 of us eho accepted enhanced redundancy by deadline did not know this would happen).

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 46/n

2. Money is now also so core to all my decision-making in how to spend my time, what jobs to go for - and balancing the need for money with wanting to do good, environmental work, and things I enjoy and am good at. It is quite strange, I gave a lecture at SOAS in Feb this year on “Doing Work You Believe in and be paid for it”, on the very day the Goldsmiths mass redundancies were announced (will see if I can upload recording here)

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 47/n

This was a combination of two papers: one on unpaid Eastbourne climate activism, one on sustainability professionals in the palm oil sector. It is very strange that I gave that lecture and wrote that paper - this is me now! I am out here in the wilderness, having to make a living, and yes, doing consultancy work. Which, of course, as I am rapidly learning, does not have to mean “selling out “ - my current work for the RSPB is really rewarding.

https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/4717/

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 48/n here also a link to the other paper on Eastbourne climate activism, i’ve shared it before but doing so again as it has a brief section on what kind of work is rewarded by high salaries, and what isn’t. I still feel this is an incredibly important topic and not really talked about enough in #ClimateAction circles. Maybe we can talk about it more together here?

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/2/4/32

From Ecophany to Burnout? An Anthropologist’s Reflections on Two Years of Participating in Council-Citizen Climate Governance in Eastbourne

In July 2019, Eastbourne Borough Council declared a climate emergency and committed to making Eastbourne carbon neutral by 2030. In order to achieve this, citizens together with Council created a unique model of council-citizen collaborative climate governance, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EAN). EAN’s main strategy has been the setting up of targeted working groups, each bringing together Councillors, engaged citizens and providers, and each tackling a specific area of climate action through a combination of infrastructure, institutional and behavioural changes. As an environmental anthropologist living in Eastbourne, I was involved in this process right from the beginning, having had my own ‘ecophany’—the realisation that the climate emergency required urgent action—in February 2019. Two years and one pandemic later, in this paper I reflect on the overall experiences and challenges of EAN’s and Eastbourne Borough Council’s work towards town-wide carbon neutrality to date, discussing possible factors (structural and other) determining varying successes and failures. At the same time, this paper provides an auto-ethnographic account of what ‘engaged anthropology’ means in practice, mapping out the real contributions anthropologists can and should make in local climate action, but also reflecting on challenges encountered along the way.

MDPI
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 49/n Anyway, just to end for today: a huge, HUGE shout out ❤️ to everyone on here who works “freelance”, going from one projec to another (more on “projects” and projectification later - so important in itself). I am now realising the immense privilege of a secure job (not secure in my case, as it turned out), where you don’t have to think about where your money will come from in 6 months or whatever. It is a fundamentally different state of being. Everything now existential.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 50/n Today adding this excellent video by @RichardJMurphy on how “the City” is not our “Jewel in the Crown”, as Rachel Reeves put it, but a parasite extracting huge amounts of money for self-enrichment. It does not add any value to the economy.

So important to see the City for what it is.

https://youtu.be/yZYXZR4AXSY?si=YTtLWpLD7wzzt5hd

Do the people who work in the City of London add value?

YouTube

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 51/n Richard’s video has spurred me on to do a few posts now on #PrivateEquity. Long overdue here, because private equity is at the heart of how our world works!

(Just to state again: i am not an expert, just someone who is trying to make sense of our world by #FollowingTheMoney, in an eclectic 🧵)

To start with basics: what is private equity? I like this clear definition by Justin Robertson

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563460903288270

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 52/n

The amount of wealth and assets held by private equity is vast. The biggest private equity firm of all is of course #BlackRock, founded by Larry Fink in 1988. Here is a lovely Statistica chart showing how its “assets under management” grew from $1.31 trillion (i mean, not bad) to $10.41 trillion in 2024. Bloomberg predicts they will hit $15 trillion in a few years

https://www.statista.com/statistics/891292/assets-under-management-blackrock/

BlackRock: assets under management 2024 | Statista

Total assets under management (AUM) of BlackRock reached over nine trillion USD

Statista
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 53/n I have to go now but over the next few days just want to talk about what this means: it means that so much of the world around us - restaurants, care homes, appartment blocks, student accommodation, etc etc, is all owned by private equity; that there is no escape.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 54/n

This article is hard to stomach for all those of us currently looking for work, and not finding anything suitable, or anything at all. But it’s good that at least rising #unemployment is recognised now.

My own #redundancy last year and subsequent struggles have made me so alert to all these wider structural changes; I am really scared that this may be just the beginning. Terrible combination of AI and money going only to the rich

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/10/britons-hunting-for-a-job-uk-jobseekers-pay?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

‘It’s nightmarish’: why 1.5m Britons are still hunting for a job

UK jobseekers say employers are hiring fewer staff, whom they expect to do more for less pay

The Guardian
@pvonhellermannn Sending a note from the maelstrom of redundancy negotiations. It’s chaotic and you’re right, suddenly the focus on money is acute. Your thread has been so helpful.
@kate security was just thinking about you - how are things going for you? Finally put notifications for your posts yesterday- sorry, I probably missed quite a lot
@pvonhellermannn It’s chaotic and sad, the communications are erratic and inconsistent, and everyone is exhausted. I’m in a calm situation as I have choices. But it’s a case study in a terrible way to treat others.
@pvonhellermannn Please tell me this is a joke....
Why is Elon Musk becoming Donald Trump's efficiency adviser?

The tech billionaire joins the incoming administration to "dismantle government bureaucracy" - but what's in it for both of them?

@pvonhellermannn I suppose he is efficient….
@pvonhellermannn having worked at Twitter, up until Elon Musk was coming, I can confidently say he destroyed Twitter with the layoffs. The only reason it continues to function is because of the work that was done before his time.
@tomzalt Yes. i am so sorry this happened to you and so many others. I really hope you been able to find another job/source of income?

@pvonhellermannn I’m very fortunate to be doing well myself.

Friends in Europe are finally, after 2 years, winning the lawsuits to get their severance.

@pvonhellermannn All our government services are about to get gutted to pieces to eliminate competition for private industry. Hey! The free market! 😒
@pvonhellermannn the man, the myth, the legend, guy who barely killed PayPal with the efficiency of his management, man who bought his place in already good Tesla and got the subsidies for it through the lies and managed SpaceX for 6 years and became successful only after getting 1.6 billion in subsidies from the government. Man who did not create anything good without government money and supervision now supervises government efficiency. Lovely
@alihan_banan @pvonhellermannn Luckily, conflict of interest concerns are only for functioning democracies.
@pvonhellermannn That gay is the big trouble for all
@pvonhellermannn Ramaswamy smartened up, though, and bailed out immediately.

@pvonhellermannn

I'm so sorry to read this post.

I had been wondering how you were doing at your place of employment and this is terrible news.

@pvonhellermannn very interesting! I wonder what the alternative might have been though... $64 billion or more fairly distributed among the other 90 richest 100? Old-school arms and oil traders or something?
@pvonhellermannn it is painful and sad and overwhelming 😔😭
@pvonhellermannn i think this kind of ecological 'regeneration through abandonment' is going to become increasingly common over the next few decades. Entire cities will become increasingly neglected and we know from the example of Chernobyl that this can be hugely beneficial for biodiversity even under the worst conditions.
@pvonhellermannn (I'm not saying this is an ideal thing, just something that forms part of the world we are faced with)
@Loukas maybe not ideal but i fully agree with you, it’s something that can and does happen - vibrancy, life in unanticipated, unplanned ways. There is definitely something positive about that.

@pvonhellermannn

Whilst I agree on that, the abandonment of the gardens on the front is tragic.

Adoption of a Dutch style grass and perennial scheme rather than old-fashioned summer bedding would certainly make sense but what I saw there was abandonment.

It is difficult to attract tourism but the rot makes it even more difficult. It will create a downward spiral of further deprivation.

Time was, the Parks Department won awards. All that expertise thrown away.

How Housing Costs Drive Levels of Homelessness

A new analysis of rent prices and homelessness in American cities demonstrates the strong connection between the two: homelessness is high in urban areas where rents are high, and homelessness rises when rents rise.

The end of landlords: the surprisingly simple solution to the UK housing crisis

Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism

The Guardian
@pvonhellermannn “UK (England)” is unclear - do they mean the UK, or do they mean England?
@melanie good question! It is unclear. Probably explained in the article itself (see link) but I don’t have time to check it just now.

@pvonhellermannn

I didn’t sign that letter- No one approached me.

I did write an email response directly to their alumni office (see pic) that my husband (financial engineering msc) and I (earth science PhD) would not be giving a dime (as alumni)

Email links to this message from Shafik

https://vimeo.com/942370647

Missing from message is the reality on #columbia campus::
No students
Nypd everywhere
Kettling barricades everywhere
Nypd ID checks w no one in line because so few are being let in

A Message From President Shafik

Vimeo