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@pre@boing.world
2025-06-26 17:04:54
Content warning: UKPol, Palestine Action, Email to my MP

Dear Emily Thornberry,
I don't usually bother to write to you on most issues because I figure there is pretty much no point communicating with a whipped MP in a safe seat under first past the post. Such an MP has no reason to listen to their constituents at all, and is entirely a tool of the party leadership.
I make an exception today since I hear your government is about to classify Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Despite them being peaceful, non-violent, and dedicated entirely to preventing the greater crime of the ongoing genocide of Gazan Palestinians.
This is obviously a gross overreaction and a completely unjustifiable act designed not to prevent domestic terrorism but to cover up British forces and UK government involvement and collaboration with the genocide in Gaza.
If we are taking suggestions for groups to ban as terrorists even though they aren't terrorists, I would like to suggest the Labour Party! The party has helped facilitate a genocide abroad, and continues to supply the perpetrators with arms and intelligence to aid their actions.
I don't expect you to take that suggestion seriously, but maybe Reform will take it seriously when they get elected in a few years and I suggest it again to them. After all, a precedent will have been set that groups which aren't terrorists can be banned under anti-terror legislation anyway. Democracy will have already been eroded.
I was ready to be disappointed by this Labour government, but I confess that the level of gut-wrenching visceral disgust I am experiencing at them surpassed all my wildest expectations. Taking money from the disabled to buy new war-planes from a fascist US president while abetting a genocide in Gaza makes me wonder if Reform wouldn't be better in the end anyway. At least they might do electoral reform and nationalize the water companies.
Labour's only hope, the country's only hope, is to remove Starmer. I wish you had won that leadership election instead of him.
Anyway, as I say, I don't expect it to make any difference at all because under this election system even MPs in safe seats are nothing but tools of the party leadership and the party leadership seems determined. But I thought I'd let you know that I see you. I see what you are doing.
I support Palestine Action more than I support this government. Let me know where I should hand myself in for my "crime".
Yours sincerely,
Adam

@tiotasram@kolektiva.social
2025-06-13 10:05:11

For various reasons I'm probably not going to be at any Saturday protests for long, but I'm thinking about buying & dropping off some supplies to support them:
- Bottled water and/or electrolyte drinks.
- Slats, posterboard, markers, and stapler to let people who show up without a sign make their own.
Anyone else got good ideas or planning on doing supply runs?
#Protests #NoKings

@pre@boing.world
2025-06-15 13:52:55

Read "What went wrong with capitalism" by Ruchir Sharma.
A mildly interesting description of the major events in world an US economics in the last 50 years. Might
be a fair summary for anyone who didn't live through it or has a poor memory.
In short he thinks what went wrong was government bailing out failure leading to massive debts and increa
sed inequality.
Governments took over all the things instead of letting capitalism sort them out, he reckons, and wheneve
r a big industry or company fails you just get socialism for the rich and a bail-out from new printed money.
Easy cheap money, constant bail-outs, government intervention, leading to zombie companies racking up every larger debt to exist, billionaires who can't fail due to government support, and a stock market that's up-only bringing a flood of inefficiently-allocated capital.
Is he right? I mean, maybe, sort of. But when an industry really can't be allowed to fail, say water supply and waterway management, allowing private capital to extract maximum resources from it isn't the best method to manage it in the first place. No wonder they need bail-outs. Capitalism fails here because capitalism isn't the right solution here. We need publicly owned national services, not robber barons without
bailouts.
So, you know, half right. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why capitalism fails, but also we shouldn't even be trying to apply capitalism to every single thing in the first place.
#reading #capitalism #economics #RuchirSharma