Pauline von Hellermann#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
#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.”
Aral Balkan (@[email protected])
“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
#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
#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.”
#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.
#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.
#FollowTheMoney 35/n #ClimateDiary #AcademicVenting
This is why:
DB 🇵🇸 🌎🌏🌍 (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image Yeah, why are things... #Prices #News #Corporations #Monopolies
#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).
#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
#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
#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
Pauline von Hellermann (@[email protected])
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
#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.
#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?
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.
#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.
Do the people who work in the City of London add value?
#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/
#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
#FollowTheMoney 🧵55/n
“Keri said her father had been “powered by unconditional love” but he felt the government took advantage of the nearly 6 million people like him who care for a loved one, saving the taxpayer at least £162bn a year.”
This reminded of a thought I had a while back: how salaries/wages are directly negatively correlated with love.
When you do something you love, or out of love, this is instantly punished by capitalism.
Carers, nursery workers -
‘Nobody found him in time’: how neglect and stress led to the deaths of a full-time carer and his son
David Lodge died after being found next to his father and full-time carer Peter’s body. His sister Keri believes the strain of caring and lack of government support contributed to their deaths
#FollowTheMoney 🧵56/n
- nurses, art gallery workers, conservation NGOs, academics, etc - all these jobs that people do out of love for something/one are poorly paid. Love is exploited. More love = less money.
Only love of money itself and nothing else is rewarded with money (high salaries, bonuses, etc). Maybe not surprising - what do you expect in capitalism - but not much honesty about it. All that neoliberal motivational #Passion talk (“my work is my passion”) - exploitative bollocks.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵57/n
This LinkedIn post resonates … wanted to share here just in case there are others who are in this situation too.
Also one reason I hardly ever add to this 🧵any more is that, of course, I am literally trying to #FollowTheMoney, or rather, divert some from somewhere to my bank account😄 #JobSearch #FediHire
This week, a friend told me they’d taken a job with lower pay and a… | Catherine Stagg-Macey | 158 comments
This week, a friend told me they’d taken a job with lower pay and a smaller title. “It’s not my dream job,” they said. “But I need the money.” My heart ached for him. The last two years have been the hardest I’ve seen in 30 years of watching the job market. Talented people who once had their pick of opportunities are taking lower salaries/titles because they don’t have any choice. This in a world that’s full of “Find your purpose.” And “Do work that lights you up every damn day.” F**k purpose for a minute. There’s no shame in taking the job that feeds your family. There’s no shame in staying in an industry you don’t love if it keeps the lights on. Some of us are just trying to get through the month. And that’s okay. This season won’t last forever. I used to believe I had to “love what I do” every day. That if I wasn’t perfectly aligned with my highest values, I was failing. What a load of privileged bullshit. I once seriously considered selling used knickers on eBay. It was twenty years ago and I was broke and desperate. I never went through with it but it tells you where my head was. To those of you who are between jobs, just remember you more resilient, more adaptable, more courageous than any job title can measure. And this too shall pass. | 158 comments on LinkedIn
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 58/n
I think so much about middle class-ness at the moment. More research in news this week how it’s the top 10%, those with incomes over £36,000, who are largely responsible for CO2 emissions; but it’s even more than that; middle-class aspirations shape everything. So conscious of this now as I am so driven in finding work so as not to have to sell our (nice, middle class, highly mortgaged house). Then a friend just sent me this - must read. #ClimateDiary
#FollowTheMoney 🧵59/n
Meanwhile our lovely king..
Meanwhile also, as I am listening to the radio as I am typing this: yet another horrific attack in northern #Gaza. Another 50 killed, after yesterday’s 80. This is our world.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵60/n
“The wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires has surged by $6.5tn (£4.8tn) in real terms over the past decade, according to Oxfam, equivalent to 14.6% of global output”
Capitalism is shit.It is by the rich for the rich and destroys everything else in the process. Let’s keep saying it!
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jun/26/billionaires-wealth-oxfam-report?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
#FollowTheMoney 🧵61/n
Just adding this here. A little poll I did a while back!
Pauline von Hellermann (@[email protected])
So, does anyone on here still believe in capitalism? #Capitalism [ ] Yes [ ] No
#FollowTheMoney 🧵62/n
A key dimension to capitalism’s destructivism is, of course, its complete intertwining with warfare. Here more than anywhere it’s crucial to #FollowTheMoney, as Craig Murray does beautifully in this piece.
Dystopia UK: Genocidal RAF Squadron Targeted by Palestine Action is Owned by a Hedge Fund
Dystopia UK: Genocidal RAF Squadron Targeted by Palestine Action is Owned by a Hedge Fund - Craig Murray
If you thought RAF jets were owned by the RAF, think again. The RAF squadron targeted for a repaint by Palestine Action due to its involvement in supplying Israel’s genocide, does not in fact belong to the RAF at all. It belongs ultimately to Polygon Global Partners LLP, a Hedge Fund. Through a chain of […]
#FollowTheMoney 🧵63/n Excellent article by Tim White on how across Europe #privateequity has been buying up significant proportions of housing and driving up rental prices. A key dynamic in growing inequality that contributes to alienation and rise of far-right.
Everything is about #Assets.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵64/n The article made me think once again about Monopoly, and how perfectly it captures what the world is like. Originally called “the Landlord Game”, it was invented in 1903 by left-wing feminist Lizzie Magie who wanted to expose how rentier capitalism works through a game. She more than succeeded but - this being capitalist US - never got the credit for it. Interesting piece about it all here.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵65/n
Why is the FTSE 100 at a record high? Could it be that the markets love war, chaos, the prospect of building concentration camps and more? Is the City rubbing its hands in glee at the prospect of making profit from oppression?
Richard Murphy (@[email protected])
Why is the FTSE 100 at a record high? https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07/11/why-is-the-ftse-100-at-a-record-high/ Why is the FTSE 100 at a record high? Could it be that the markets love war, chaos, the prospect of building concentration camps and more? Is the City rubbing its hands in glee at the prospect of making profit from oppression?
#FollowTheMoney 🧵66/n Have to add this here, too. As Takei says, always follow the money!
Soencer Hakimian: I have good reason to believe that somebody knew the copper tariffs were coming and traded the news ahead of time, and made an ungodly amount of profit.
Trump announced his new 50% copper tariff at 12:58 PM yesterday.
But as my charting shows, the price of copper began spiking at 12:56 PM.
George Takei :verified: 🏳️🌈🖖🏽 (@[email protected])
Attached: 2 images Always follow the money.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵67/n
Forgot that this post should havev been part of this thread, really! 😊
Pauline von Hellermann (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image Someone just said “He who has the golden goose makes the golden rule” to me, and, googling this, I came across this book about the Kingdom of Id. Now as good a time as ever to share, I thought! #Trump #Golden #WizardOfId
#FollowTheMoney 🧵68/n Have been reading up a bit on Elbit Systems, the Israel military corporation that has been a key supplier in rhe genocide, that Palestina Action protested about, and that the UK government may shortly be signing a £2billion contract wirh to train UK military. Was wondering whether UK pension funds may be investing in Elbit Systems - and yes, they are!
“good returns”
#FollowTheMoney 🧵69/n I then looked up whether USS (the university oension scheme) invests in Elbit, and of course, yes, indirectly , they do
#FollowTheMoney 🧵70/n and THIS is the USS statement on this - really worth reading. #Gaza
Financialisation is so evil.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵71/n Great to see Zack Polanski use “Follow The Money” as a political slogan - so it should be! (apologies for sharing an X post, tried to find the video elsewhere, failed) #ZackPolanski
#GreenParty #UKPolitics
Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) on X
Now this is how you announce your election victory! Finally the Green Party have good comms - and finally they have a leader who’s totally confident using anti-elite populist rhetoric that will enthuse a far wider voter base. No more meekness!
#FollowTheMoney 🧵72/n “Vice like grip” - nice.
“In 2025 you can still buy advantage, massively increasing your chance of getting into the most powerful roles in the country. This is grossly unfair, and a waste of talent on a huge scale. If we want a fairer country and a stronger economy, employers and policymakers must take responsibility for levelling the playing field, where privilege is no longer a passport to power.”
#FollowTheMoney 🧵73/n
American billionaires have reached $7.6 trillion of personal wealth , up $4.7 trillion (or 160%) in the less than eight years since the first Trump-GOP tax law was enacted in December 2017.
Most of that wealth increase has never been taxed and may never be under current law.
Number of billionaires grew from 551 to 905. But the top 15 - each worth over $100 billion– have seen their wealth grow by more than 300%.
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-7-trillion/
Most Of Billionaires’ $7.6 Trillion Has Never Been Taxed - Americans For Tax Fairness
Total Billionaire Wealth Is Up 160% Since First Trump Tax Law; Proposed New Levy Would Finally Tax Unrealized Gains of the Wealthiest American billionaires reached a record breaking $7.6 trillion of personal wealth as of Labor Day 2025, up $4.7 trillion (or 160%) in the less than eight years since the first Trump-GOP tax law …
#FollowTheMoney 🧵74/n Just finished listening to this 2part #TheDig podcast interview with Melinda Cooper about her book “Counterrevolution. Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance”, and really cannot recommend it enough. A really excellent, grounded and stimulating account of the neoliberal “counterrevolution” as a deliberate project carried out over several decades by different political actors making fiscal choices that reshaped economy, values and politics
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-dig/id1043245989?i=1000729326228
#FollowTheMoney 🧵75/n what i particularly appreciated:
1. Disaggregating each decade - how assets became the key focus of economic over time
2. How this links to a conservative political project - the family the key unit for multiple reasons
3. How asset economics the material basis for far right populism
4. Brilliant focus on changing construction worker politics,property speculators (Trump) and homeownership - construction such a key sector in all this
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-dig/id1043245989?i=1000731213819
#FollowTheMoney 🧵76/n i have just ordered the book (Counterrevolution) - i really feel it’s so important to get a grounded understanding of how this world that we now all live in was created - and, as Melinda Cooper brings out so clearly: none of this was inevitable, it was all done, bit by bit, on purpose. This doesn’t make it any easier to undo necessarily but understanding all this is surely a first, key step.
Here also Katrina Forrester’s review in the LRB
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n12/katrina-forrester/i-appreciate-depreciation
#FollowTheMoney 🧵77/n This piece really chimes with Melinda Cooper’s analysis ⬆️ (74-76) and many previous posts: it’s about how asset capitalism (and AI) is hollowing out the middle class, with a small number joining the elite, the rest working increasingly on close to minimum wages. Also speaks to my own recent experiences… and many others too, I imagine. Especially recent graduates. The whole university>white collar job>decent salary model is crumbling.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵78/n #ZohranMamdani’s win has to be logged here - for three reasons!
1. This 🧵 all about the #oligarchy, the way it structures our world, and Mamdani taking it on directly, talking about it, making us all #SEEtheoligarchy is just 🔥
Mamdani condemns ‘oligarchy and authoritarianism’ in speech directly talking to Trump
#FollowTheMoney 🧵79/n
2. Melinda Cooper’s brilliant #Counterrevolution (posts 74-76 ⬆️ ) describes how #NewYork was the place that the neoliberal counterrevolution began - where fiscal policies redistributing money towards the rich, assets and property (Trump’s world!) were first tested and then taken elsewhere.
So exciting that New York is now the place where a different, socialist politicsl economy is emerging! Go New York! Let this spread everywhere from here, too!
#FollowTheMoney 🧵80/n #ZohranMamdani
3. Lastly, I am also super excited that the son of an anthropologist is now Mayor of New York! Of course it’s wrong to claim Mamdani for anthropology- he is own person, and his mother is brilliant too - but I want to just do this for now. Anthropology, as David Graeber said, is about possibilities, - this is what Mamdani is showing us all now, too. I see so much of anthro in what he is doing I will shamelessly share this 🧵
Pauline von Hellermann (@[email protected])
My discipline, anthropology, is not seen as a “growth" discipline, and departments are being closed down. But the world needs Anthropology and Anthropologists now more than ever! Here are my 8 reasons for this: 1. POSSIBILITIES At a time of polycrisis, when the destructive fallouts of capitalist modernity are ever more apparent, anthropology highlights that there are myriad alternative ways of thinking and living; that there is so much to learn from other peoples in the world. 1/n
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 81/n From Foreign Correspondent to Uber Driver
This is an incredible, moving personal perspective on this system that we are all entangled in, that shifts money to the few away from the rest of us at accelerating rate.
Having also experienced #Redundancy not too long ago and still very much in the doldrums of short term, part time jobs, this resonates deeply. So many are going through this, we need to help each other. #Precarity
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 82/n In the UK, the best thing you can do to try and mobilise against rising inequality is to join the Green Party!
This new campaign video by #ZackPolanski is brilliant. This too, reaonated deeply - this is me right now. We need to find ways to collectively stop running and pause!
How We Make Hope Normal Again- Green Party Political Broadcast
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 83/n Linking nicely to #GreenParty ad i shared yesterday (⬆️ do watch! it’s great!) - here an interesting discussion on Novara Media on the relationship between low growth (and ordinary people not benefiting from growth even where there is some) and the decline of liberal democracy. A lot to unpack and do agree with discussants that more complex, but good to centre economic stagnation and rising inequality in decline of political trust and #Democracy
Liberal Democracy Is Closer To Collapse Than You Think
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 84/n Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis show
“People want to feel like the country is turning a corner. That means taking action on record levels of deep poverty so everyone can afford the essentials. It means making people feel supported rather than being one redundancy or bout of ill health away from failing to make ends meet.”
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 85/n
Mandelson: “I do not want to live by salary alone”
This whole Novara Media episode on the #Epstein files is so worth listening to. How it all works. Mandelson feeding market sensitive information from inside No 10. Epstein transferring $75,000 to him. It all stinks, it is all deeply corrupt, but this is the system under which we all live.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/novara-live/id1510920958?i=1000747764420
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 86/n Think #Epstein is salacious trivia? Not for you? Don’t!
The revelations concern us all - an unprecedented insight into how power, money, patriarchy work, and how deeply corrupt it all is.
I really recommend following it all on #Novara media. Incredibly insightful discussions in every episode.
Also: do subscribe if you can. So, so important to create different money flows, towards good, critical media and investigative journalism
Peter Mandelson To Face Criminal Investigation over Jeffrey Epstein | #novaralive
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 87/n This just made me laugh, and is also interesting! #Epstein himself organising seminars on power and money!
Reminded me of Michael Gove having a statue of Gramsci in his office and using Gramsci: it’s not instinctive how these people create and maintain power and money: they think and read about and apply insights systematically and strategically.
We on the left can learn a lot from this, frankly.
BeeCycling@pvonhellermannn It's quite the feat to be taken down by the Epstein files without apparently being implicated in any of the sex stuff.
@beecycling yes! Though the messages btw them are kind of about sex too sometimes. “Yum yum” etc. but mostly about money - and yes, quite interesting how Mandelson is so involved, given that a core bond btw all these men was their shared predilection for young girls. Ash Sarkar brilliantly cites Marx at the beginning, that the Bourgeoisie is really about wives in common.
Wherever you listen...
Jonathan Schofield
stfn@pvonhellermannn I love this cover, it's so over the top I'd frame it on my wall ❤️
@pvonhellermannn apart from the fake Cyrylic, it's so dumb, what does "Yaed" even mean
@stfn I know!! It’s great 😄
Doug Grinbergs@pvonhellermannn delighted to see oligarch fascist Rupert Murdoch's New York Compost losing their mind😉😆😂
The Crafty Miss@pvonhellermannn Noted fondly your point on their incorrect use of Cyrillics in the alt
Zoidberg For President@pvonhellermannn Still lightyears away from socialism...
Patrick Leavy
Jennifer Moore 😷A tear came to my eye watching that! Even with the sound down!
@unchartedworlds Yes! It makes you realise how deprived we are of political leaders simply talking about things as they are, and more or less representing our views. Really hope it stays this way.
Yeah. The way you put it there, it reminds me of a thing I wrote about Corbyn in 2016:
"Hearing him acknowledge what people are struggling with, hearing him put into words some of the experiences of people in poverty, I thought: I have been thirsty for this. I have been thirsty for these kinds of truthful, compassionate, realistic words to come from someone with that kind of public role and platform."
https://www.uncharted-worlds.org/blog/2016/10/an-outside-view-on-the-labour-party/
Little did I know then how close Corbyn's Labour would come to winning the 2017 election! Or how much internal sabotage was still going on to stop that happening!
Alx 🐈@pvonhellermannn what an absolute shame.
Unredacted Epstein files now@pvonhellermannn Cynicism at its finest.