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Adam Ramsay
@AdamRamsay
posh socialist. dyslexic journalist. writer. Stone skimmer, baby juggler. Abu Léa. He/Him. I mostly transcribe the voices in my head. 🍉
Edinburgh, Scotlandopendemocracy.netJoined May 2008

Adam Ramsay’s posts

The Coronavirus is an important reminder that health isn’t private. As a species we live in herds. Everyone’s health relies to some extent on everyone else’s. Healthcare has to be public because health is public.
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It's funny how Britain is totally obsessed with the 'Dunkirk spirit', but when there is an actual opportunity to sail across the Channel and pick up a bunch of people fleeing war, we hurl abuse at them instead.
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Worth noting that this was all caused by Labour’s shadow Secretary of State for Net Zero & Climate Change bringing a vote on fracking. This is, in other words, chaos with .
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Desmond Tutu was perhaps the great moral leader of his era. He refused to share a stage with Blair, calling him a war criminal. He called Israeli apartheid what it is. He said he’d rather go to hell than worship a homophobic God. Global celebrity never bent his morality.
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If we had a functional press, this would be the end of Johnson.
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Replying to @StefSimanowitz @peterjukes and 47 others
60/. On 3 Feb, @BorisJohnson made this speech in Greenwich. “There’s a risk that new diseases such as #coronavirus will trigger a panic & a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real & unnecessary economic damage.” #COVID19
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Remember that Bolsonaro is largely in power because Brazil’s establishment was unwilling to accept mild social democracy. Remember that the world is being killed because the richest were unwilling to share. Remember who did this - and don’t let them forget.
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There are more UK companies listed in this leaked cache of documents about money laundering than there were companies from any other country. There were more UK companies in the Panama papers too. Because the UK is the world’s money laundry. Our whole economy is dirty.
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Leaked documents reveal some of the world’s biggest banks allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world bbc.in/2FKQvnk
Breaking News
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The man who cut London’s fire service went on to be prime minister. The women and men who ran into the inferno faced the blame. Welcome to Tory Britain.
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The press often misses the most basic and simple fact about Theresa May. This is the woman who brought you racist vans, the Windrush scandal and the hostile environment. She’s a straight down the line English nationalist bigot, and that’s basically all you need to know about her.
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Hey , why did you have a lobbyist on without telling viewers which company is paying him?
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“Can I just explain this mythology for one moment, America doesn’t actually chlorinate chicken” The IEA’s Shanker Singham tells #newsnight that “peracetic acid is used for the most part and has been approved by the European Food Safety Agency”
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I have not been following the Salmond/Sturgeon stuff as closely as some, but isn’t the bottom line that was told her mentor and friend of two decades had mistreated women, and took the brave choice to believe the women? Isn’t that... what we’d want?
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The BBC allowing Nicholas Witchell to continue to compare 'difficulties' with Andrew with 'difficulties' with Harry and Meghan is criminal.
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In the early days of Cameron’s government, Frank Field worked hard to shift the blame for the financial crisis from the powerful onto the unemployed and immigrants. Labour is much better off without him.
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Bannon leads a movement of richer than average white men. The BBC producer who thinks these people are “anti-elite” is parroting dangerous nonsense. Well done .
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Replying to @NicolaSturgeon
The email the BBC sent to my office justifying Bannon’s inclusion described him as a ‘powerful and influential figure...promoting an anti-elite movement.’ This kind of language to describe views that many would describe as fascist does seem to me to run the risk of normalisation.
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Every one of the 114 Tory MPs who voted for Johnson knows that he’s a pathological liar, a charlatan, a racist, a workshy bullshitter and a nasty piece of work. They may not be those things themselves, but they do now own this. They are now complicit. He is now their fault.
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Hi , did you ask whether her salary is funded by private healthcare companies? Because if not, you’re breaking your own conflict of interest rules by promoting corporate lobbyists without telling the audience who their clients are.
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“It’s time to overhaul the NHS and replace it with a system fit for 2018” – Kate Andrews argues that the NHS’s “sacred status” prevents much-needed reforms. @KateAndrs | #newsnight
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Replying to
The fact that he’s intelligent (he is), well read (he is), cultured (he is), & charming in an old fashioned way (he is) shouldn’t distract from the fact that he functions to romanticise a system which ultimately benefits the powerful, impoverishes the poor & burns the planet.
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Macron’s party has drawn up an alliance with Le Pen’s far right in the French legislature rather than working with the Left. If you’re surprised, you probably haven’t been paying attention to who Macron really is.
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🔴 L’alliance LREM/RN/LR est en marche ! Jour funeste à l’Assemblée nationale révélant l’accord de la macronie avec l’extrême-droite et la droite dans la répartition des postes. C’est donc cela la « nouvelle méthode » de #Macron ! 👏 La #NUPES, seule force d’opposition.
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Fun fact: British broadband is particularly slow because Thatcher refused to let nationalised BT invest in fibre-optics because she thought the market should be left to deliver. It didn’t: techradar.com/uk/news/world-
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Fast and free broadband for everyone in the country, paid for by taxing Amazon, Google and Facebook. A huge policy and just a glimpse of what we'll see in the manifesto. ✊😍 #FastAndFree #BritishBroadband
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Ahead of the Iraq War, Murdoch owned 175 papers round the world. 174 of them supported the war. The Hobart Mercury in Tasmania initially opposed it, but we’re instructed by head office to change their position. The one editor who refused was reassigned.
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Replying to @AnthonyGlees
Anyone in papers would tell you that editors, still less proprietors almost never tell anyone what to write. It’s a fantasy of the conspiracy minded. I generally write everything I can prove. Yes, people in power have the chance to feed into that but I decide what I write
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Commenting on postal votes, having seen them, is a criminal offence.
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Dominic Raab, in my latest @MailPlus_ report, says he’s “quietly confident” of holding off big Lib Dem challenge in his Esher & Walton seat. “Have a look at the postal votes,” he tells me. mailplus.co.uk/tv/the-michael
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I've walked on a road in Hebron which Israelis can drive down, but Palestinians can't; sat on a beach in Jericho from which Palestinians were banned; wandered round a Settlement with armed guards on the gates keeping "the Arabs" out. That's enforced apartness. It's apartheid.
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You’re going to hear a lot about ‘the national interest’ from both liberal and conservative types in the coming days. Don’t forget that there is no such thing. Your interests are not the same as the oil giants, the hedge funds, the money launderers & the mercenary firms.
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Soros gives his money in the open. It's no scoop to reveal where get their cash from. The real secret money in British politics pays the DUP, ERG, Taxpayers Alliance, Adam Smith Institute, & Centre for Policy Studies. But we don't see the Telegraph touching them.
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We allowed our newspapers to be owned by offshore oligarchs.
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How on earth did we end up with a press that does more to scrutinise the lives of people like Caroline Flack and Meghan Markle than it does the elected representatives of the people? That props up a dying print media through victimisation, lies, and bullying?
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Do you think, maybe, knowing that if you miss a penalty, you will be subject to appalling racism, somewhat increases the pressure on a player? Makes it all more stressful? Makes keeping a cool head harder?
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Replying to and
For us, this story began more than two years ago, when we got a tranche of Electoral Commission internal emails which revealed they had thought the Vote Leave/Darren Grimes relationship probably broke the rules. But they'd decided not to investigate:
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Replying to
Throughout this whole process, Vote Leave and pals have worked very hard to spin this story away. They’ve been so successful that some prominent journalists seem to have genuinely believed them. Hopefully that ends today. #bbcqt
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Saying ‘there is no fuel shortage’ entirely misunderstands how scarcity works in capitalist economies. Famines don’t happen because of a lack of food either, they happen because of how the food is distributed. Welcome, in other words, to the chaos of the free market.
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It’s totally obvious that a huge swathe of the media has normalised Islamophobia over the last twenty years, and colleagues getting defensive when this is pointed out should probably quietly reflect on why that’s your first emotion.
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There are more Muslims in France than any other Western country. In two weeks, those with citizenship will have to go out and vote for a man who has promoted Islamophobia and bigotry out of expedience in order to stop a woman who actively hates them. Love to them all.
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The most ‘successful’ people I’ve met: - are white - are cis men - inherited money - went to private school - are not disabled - secured their success through capitalism, imperial legacy, heteronormativity, white power, patriarchy & luck; not workout regimes or reading habits.
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The most successful people I've met: 1. Read constantly 2. Workout daily 3. Are innately curious 4. Have laser focus 5. Believe in themselves 6. Build incredible teams 7. Admit they know very little 8. Constantly work to improve 9. Demand excellence in everything they do
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Every time you look at the result in Georgia, remember this: it wouldn't even be close if the Republicans hadn't deleted two hundred thousand people - mostly Black people - from the electoral roll.
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The reason #Georgia is important is that, as of this year, it's become a white minority state. It's very hard for the GOP to control it. The only way they can do it is by stealing it.
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People like were attacking anyone who questioned this government strategy less than two weeks ago. Now, they are outraged that people they trusted turn out not to be trustworthy. These people don’t do journalism. They do anti-journalism, protection of the powerful.
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This article from @ShippersUnbound needs to be the end of Dom Cummings. No ifs or buts. The man needs to go. thetimes.co.uk/article/corona
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The readership of the Guardian on mobile phones alone is 2.8 million a day: newsworks.org.uk/the-guardian Good Morning Britain gets around 800,000 views a day: google.co.uk/amp/s/metro.co But has never let facts get in the way of one of his boring stories.
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My Trump interview aired all morning on @GMB & then again in full at 10.50pm. Both times, it got 10 times as many viewers as the number of people who read The Guardian. twitter.com/carolecadwalla…
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When they’re Russians we call them oligarchs. When they’re Italian we call them gangsters. But when they’re British, we worship them as ‘entrepreneurs’.
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UK gave million in subsidies to Sir James Dyson. He donned garbs of patriotism and supported Brexit. Then decides to open car factory in Singapore and all the time he used offshore havens to avoid taxes. These people have only one god and that is money thetimes.co.uk/article/reveal
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As the country fries, remember that about two-thirds of climate changing emissions since the dawn of the industrial revolution have been caused by just 90 firms. Until we take back control of the wealth & power they have amassed, we'll never stop this.
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Last month I was undercover at a Vox rally in Madrid. They were confident they’d make huge gains in the election. In fact, they didn’t do nearly as well, crushed under a big turnout. The way to beat the far right is not to vote tactically, it’s to inspire others to vote at all.
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Replying to
If you're a black man smoking a splif, then you get four officers beating you up and pepper spraying you. If you're a rich white dude breaking the laws of democracy at a vital moment of history, they don't even investigate you.
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@SadiqKhan @DavidLammy Why does it take so many officers to detain one man? Why are they still beating him and constantly spraying him in the face when he is already down. I saw lots of minutes where they could of just handcuffed him quickly. And on top of that I hope it was not.
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The £13 train journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow was the equivalent of 3 day’s salary for Umar. But he has self funded his trip all the way from northern Nigeria because he had something to tell #COP26. Here’s what he told me:
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The person responsible for the Windrush scandal, Amber Rudd, is back in government. The people who peacefully resisted it - #Stansted15 - are currently preparing to be sent to jail.
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Jeremy Corbyn has been brutally attacked in the media for four years. He's been called a terrorist and a racist yet stood firm. When asked to back an election in 2017, he was 20% behind. He walked into the fire. He is many things. But no one thinks he is a coward.
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Perhaps the most important statistic there is if you wish to understand modern British politics.
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59% think the British Empire is something to be proud of. Only 19% think it is something to be ashamed of yougov.co.uk/news/2014/07/2
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I’ve known Rory Stewart a bit since I was a teenager: I remember him in my parents kitchen talking about being offered a constituency, have danced reels at his parents house & played football with him at a family match a couple of recent Boxing Days. Here’s what you need to know:
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Léa Rosa Ramsay Daigre came with the New Year, and the snow: born at 8:53 on 1/1/21. She is the best thing I’ve ever been involved in making.
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At Mayor's Question Time, asked why the Met hadn't acted. He read out their response, saying they hadn't received the files for ages. It turned out what really happened was they hadn't bothered to collect them:
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Rang my dad (former president of the Royal Scottish Forestry Society) to ask about these numbers. He was up the hill inspecting trees. Says a decent planter will manage a minimum of 1,000 a day. Makes these figures look reasonable. The more important Q. is, what kind of trees?
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Labour's tree planting policy (with mathematical support from @BBCFrediani): Labour wants to plant 2 billion trees by 2040. That is, roughly... * 100 million/yr * Or 8.3 million a month * 2 million a week * 300,000 a day *12,400 an hour, every hr, 24hrs/day * 200 a minute #GE2019
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Priti Patel - a former lobbyists for British Tobacco and the murderous government of Bahrain - was forced to resign in 2017 because she’d effectively continued to act as a lobbyists while in office. If she becomes Home Secretary, expect more of the same:
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One effective way to sanction Russia would be for other European countries to invest in a rapid transition away from reliance on oil and gas. Let’s do that, too.
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The XR protest was a mistake. But this is a Tory MP supporting mob violence. He should either apologise, or have the whip withdrawn.
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This response in London today has my full support. Extinction Rebellion undermines its noble cause with such disruptive and illegal stunts. Well done to the general public for swiftly standing as one, stepping forward & closing the incident down when individuals break the law.
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Boris led a campaign which broke electoral law, yet stands on the brink of becoming PM: it's time to give the watchdog of our democracy real teeth. Sign our petition to give the electoral commission the powers it needs to stop big money drowning democracy:
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Vote Leave were referred to the Metropolitan Police by the Electoral Commission. But months later, nothing seemed to be happening, so we chased them up. We were told that an investigation hadn't yet been opened due to 'political sensitivities':
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