the debt time-bomb: “Growth in unsecured credit is at its highest in 4 years, with credit card borrowing growth much higher at 13.5%. Arrears on things like rent, utility bills and council tax are … starting to go in the wrong direction”
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carl packman
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campaigner/writer. phd looking at the social and financial exclusion of the precariat. 'b' in the alphabet mafia. he/they
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there’s really no hope for the reputation of the police at this point but given they’re semi-autonomous they persevere like nothings happened.
as for the king’s price tag, it’s his bloody birthday next month (well, not his actual bday but a new made up one). can we afford that?
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On Saturday night, the Met arrested three Night Stars charity volunteers.
Among other items, they seized rape alarms they hand out to vulnerable women.
My story for @itvlondon, with thanks to @brokenbottleboy who spoke to me at length having met with the arrested volunteers:
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the justification from the royal spinners was that the hefty price tag was for extra security; and then that security ended up being heavy-handed towards protest and free expression. the taxpayer foots the bill for a crackdown on democracy
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so, how much?
an “estimated at £100million.” though “no exact sum has been given on how much the coronation will cost” 
double that of qe2’s coronation (“in 1953 cost £1.5million which equates to around £50million today.”) lbc.co.uk/news/explained
double that of qe2’s coronation (“in 1953 cost £1.5million which equates to around £50million today.”) lbc.co.uk/news/explainedShow this thread
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There is no safe level of alcohol consumption.
bit.ly/3Hs2faK
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but there is having fun and that’s important, too.
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There is no safe level of alcohol consumption.
bit.ly/3Hs2faK
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📝 Me for - will we be the generation to abolish the monarchy?
🤔Only 26% of 18-34 year-olds think Britain would be worse off without monarchy
🤔34% think it’d be better to abolish it
🤔British 35-year-olds are the least conservative in recorded history
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Millennials and Gen Z have been accused of killing many an institution, from hook-up culture to the after-work happy hour. Could the monarchy be next?
@mcintosh_kim writes.
novaramedia.com/2023/05/04/its
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to be celebrated, of course.
but ukip is now represented by a political party called the conservative party
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UKIP have lost ALL of their six remaining councillors.
This means UKIP has been *completely* wiped out as an electoral force.
As of today, there isn’t a single UKIP politician elected anywhere in the country.Show this thread
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Instead of addressing the climate crisis, the British ruling class are assembling the state legal and repressive tools to attempt to contain the protest and unrest it will inevitably provoke. Wellcome to the foothills of post-democracy.
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Britain in 2023. Take a cold hard look at this, and realise that things are set to get much worse.
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who should i vote for if i hate everyone who thinks they should be a politician?
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my two cents:
bad paper us.macmillan.com/books/97812500
and
broke, usa (by ) harpercollins.com/products/broke
also do a v good job
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Top 10 books about being poor in America theguardian.com/books/2023/may
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Ending the extra costs of being poor
speaks to CHASM's Financial Inclusion Monitor series on how we help those on low incomes pay a fair price for essential services.
#povertypremium
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have a look at this 👀
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Final day today to apply for the next round of the Spokesperson Network programme. We need folks working in the world of progressive, social change who want to use TV and radio news as a tool to help achieve that change. We provide training & support... neweconomyorganisers.org/work/support-r
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does nobody advise him?
your maj, the subjects might not like being told to pick up some charity work by a man who owns a stamp collection valued at more than the cost of the coronation
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"As a billionaire king is crowned, he urges us to do some charity work. Welcome to Britain" - @DrFrancesRyan
theguardian.com/commentisfree/
i wish he wasn’t real
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Trump quotes Vladimir Lenin, a Communist tyrant, while continuing to deny outcome of 2020 election
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Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Though a proverb that circulated as early as the 1870s, Lenin is not known to have ever quoted it. His successor, Joseph Stalin, is instead often misattributed to the quote, loosely paraphrasing from a memoir written by one of Stalin’s secretaries, Boris Bazhanov.
snopes.com/fact-check/sta…
oxfordreference.com/display/10.109…
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hate directed towards the alphabet family fast becoming a much more regular feature of day to day news and it’s terrifying; blame sits squarely with government for fuelling far right behaviour on the streets, spurred on by stoking a culture war in efforts to score low life votes
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Trans folks > drag queen story times > gay bars.... fuelling the fires of far right hate against us all theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/a
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i just found out about a now demolished panopticon prison in madrid built by its former inhabitants…
*zizek voice* and in this very specific sense are we not all just prisoners building new forms of surveillance of ourselves…
Today Is Rashad Day, And One Of His Greatest Quote That If He Said It, It Didn’t Crack At All: 🗣YOU CAN’T BEAT ME!
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the ’ vice chair calling for illegal force on protest- a right, as i remember! just allows it bc he’s a weak pm on the verge of an election loss; this country is currently in the hands of total feckless scum
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Feisty exchange btw MP Lee Anderson & Commissioner of Met police Sir Mark Rowley. MP says don’t think you’re doing good job & feel like I’m wasting my time. Sir Mark says if ppl want to be personally offensive then write it in newspapers but not going to answer those questions..
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.: “More people than ever before are turning to food banks because they cannot afford to eat. Food banks face a “pressure cooker” situation as they battle to cope with demand in the cost of living crisis”
Bank of england: accept being poorer
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spiegel: “while the number of billionaires in the UK – at 177 – is higher than it has ever been, millions of Britons have slid into poverty.”
bank of england: accept being poorer and don’t ask for higher wages
y tho?
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“Things aren’t going well for the United Kingdom these days.” this is so hard to read
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. is right: enforce existing labour laws before writing new ones... "a third of workers paid at or around the wage floor were underpaid the minimum wage last year ... the UK has just 0.29 labour market inspectors per 10,000 workers".
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all the while, average executive pay increased to £2.59 million (cf unitetheunion.org/news-events/ne)
so when huw pill says it’s both companies and employees responsible for persistent high inflation he needs to think about the different contexts
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also, when he says we are “all worse off”, he’s lumping companies & employees together. but there’s a big difference… company profits were responsible for ~60% of inflation rise in q1/q2 of 2022. profits for uk’s biggest listed companies were 73% higher in 2021 than pre-pandemic
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the ft has been kind to huw pill by not carrying the line that’s going to get him in trouble; but still, this is a rich statement from someone who took home nearly £90k last year. we might all be worse off, but as he should know with inflation some are more worse off than others
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despite what the bank of england’s top economist says, i really don’t think people in this country should accept being poorer. we should be asking is it fair that the rich continue to get richer while the poor are getting poorer bbc.com/news/business-
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huw pill, the boe economist, earned a very healthy £88,000 in 2022; his boss earned £495,000 that year.
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despite what the bank of england’s top economist says, i really don’t think people in this country should accept being poorer. we should be asking is it fair that the rich continue to get richer while the poor are getting poorer
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in 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million people fell by 7.5%, whilst incomes for the richest fifth saw a 7.8% increase (equality trust)
disposable income inequality increased to 35.7% in the financial year ending 2022 from 34.4% in the financial year ending 2021 (ons)
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since 1980, the share of income earned by the top 1% in the uk has been rising, peaking at 14.7% in 2007 before the financial crisis (equality trust)
wealth inequality rose four times faster in seven years after the 2008 crash compared with the seven years before (danny dorling)
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“Fox Corp.'s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over defamation charges is eye-popping, but … Fox can deduct the Dominion settlement from its income taxes as an expense necessary for the cost of doing business”. wtf ??
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i ❤️ this article by bc it strongly hints at what many have said for some time: xr etc’s inability to talk beyond itself, beyond mostly white middle class shire activists, led to some pretty bad moves; perhaps that’s all behind them now
'High employment can mask a growing precarity problem for Britain’s workers'
article published in this month, exploring how insecure forms of work mean that employment doesn’t always confer the security it did in the past.
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you can’t just say kafkaesque and hope it means what you want it to mean, yknow
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beyond what is written here i don’t know anything about this person, or anything about what his goals and ambitions are, but i am certain he wants what is best for the country
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NEW: Oliver Dowden, long time Sunak ally, is appointed Deputy Prime Minister.
mayor of tower hamlets (one of london’s poorest boroughs; 39% in poverty), said: "Reports of Calpol being stolen from shops are utterly devastating … It shows how much the cost-of-living crisis is hurting our residents when they cannot afford basic medicines for their children”
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“Nothing suggests that [the dominant classes] have any capacity of doing anything else of their own accord because of how enmeshed they are with the process of capital accumulation”
we tried polite, didn’t work
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