DessertStorms

Jimmy ate my yogurt now he's putting it back
Used to ignore but I'll plain attack
Drop the defence now I've got you in my scope
Jimmy walk away from the fridge slowly

Got your email Jimmy, you sent it at night
You expect a response but I'm tucked in tight
I'm different now Jimmy, I'm in my power
I'll respond to your email at a reasonable hour
At a reasonable hour
At a reasonable hour
At a reasonable hoooouuuur

Self care, bad bitch, I'm a villain, I'm a villain, out of office email saying zero fucks given x4

You ask me to work late, but I'm all done
Off the clock punched out time for fun!
You ask me where I'm going so I tell you the truth
Jimmy boy I'm going to a spin class!
Kind regards, best wishes, EAT SHIT
Yours truly, sincerely, THIS BITCH
I'm different now Jimmy, I'm in my power
I'll respond to your email at a reasonable hour
At a reasonable hour
At a reasonable hour
At a reasonable hoooouuuur

Self care, bad bitch, I'm a villain I'm a villain, out of office email saying zero fucks given x6

Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope have covered climate disinformation for a combined 20-plus years – here’s their guide on how to decode it

Increasingly sophisticated and better-funded disinformation is making climate coverage trickier both for journalists to produce and for the public to fully understand and trust.

But telling the story, and understanding it, has never been more urgent with half of Earth’s population eligible to vote in elections that could decisively impact the world’s ability to act in time to stave off the worst of the climate crisis.

Swayed for 30 years by fossil fuel industry propaganda, the media has been as likely to unknowingly amplify falsehoods as they were to bat them down. It’s only in recent years that more journalists started to shy away from “both-sides-ing” the climate crisis – decades after scientists reached an overwhelming consensus on the scope of the problem and its causes.

The good news is that while the fossil fuel industry’s PR tactics have shifted, the stories they’re telling don’t change much from year to year, they are just adapted depending on what’s happening in the world.

When politicians talk about how much it will cost to act on climate change, for example, they almost always refer to economic models commissioned by the fossil fuel industry, which leave out the cost of inaction, which rises with every passing year. When politicians say that climate policies will increase the cost of gas or energy, they count on reporters having no idea how gas or energy pricing works, or how much fossil fuel companies’ production decisions, not to mention lobbying for particular fossil fuel subsidies or against policies that support renewable energy, impact those prices.

1. Energy security

From fueling wars to preserving national security, the fossil fuel industry loves to trumpet its role in keeping the world safe, even when it is engaging in geopolitical brinksmanship that makes everyone decidedly less so. In the context of national security, it’s worth noting that the US military started funding net-zero programs back in 2012 and listing climate change as a threat multiplier in its Quadrennial Defense Review a decade ago. But oil companies and their trade groups ignore that reality and instead insist the threat is in reducing fossil fuel dependence.

We’ve seen this recently in the industry’s messaging around the Russia-Ukraine war, when it mobilized even before Putin to push the idea that a global liquified natural gas (LNG) boom was a fix to short-term energy shortages in Europe. The industry has been noticeably quiet on the Israel-Palestine war, but is pushing general “we keep you safe” messaging that emphasizes global instability. In the US, energy security narratives often have nationalistic undertones, with messages pushing the global environmental and security benefits of US fossil fuel over that from countries like Qatar or Russia.

It is true that energy self-sufficiency contributes to any nation’s stability, but there’s no rule that says energy has to come from hydrocarbons. In fact, it’s well-documented that depending on an energy source vulnerable to the whims of world commodity markets and global conflicts is a recipe for volatility.

2. The economy v the environment

In 1944, when it looked like the second world war would end soon, PR guru Earl Newsom pulled together his corporate clients–including Standard Oil of New Jersey (ExxonMobil today), Ford, GM and Procter & Gamble – and crafted a top secret post-war strategy to keep the US public convinced of the “worth of the free enterprise system”.

From school curricula to Hollywood-crafted animated shorts to industry presentations to media interviews, the fossil fuel industry has hammered these themes repeatedly for decades. And, in a classic move, industry spokespeople point to studies that industry groups, like the American Petroleum Institute, commission as proof that taking care of the environment is bad for the economy.

In 2021, a peer-reviewed paper entitled “Weaponizing Economics” tracked the activity of a group of economic consultants who were hired by the petroleum industry for decades. “They produced analyses that were then used by both companies and politicians … to tell the public that it would just be way too expensive to act on climate, and that in any case, climate change was not going to be a big deal, so the best thing to do would be to do nothing,” the paper’s co-author Ben Franta, head of the Climate Litigation Lab at Oxford University, said.

These tactics also show up in ads that remind us to balance a desire for reduced emissions with the need to keep the economy going. One BP ad recently running on NPR, New York Times and Washington Post podcasts states that oil and gas equals jobs and argues for adding renewables, rather than replacing fossil fuels.

3. ‘We make your life work’

The fossil fuel industry loves to argue that it makes the world work – from keeping the lights on to keeping us riveted by smart phones and TV, and clothed in fast fashion. It’s genius: create a product, create demand for the product, and then shift the blame to consumers not just for buying it but also for its associated impacts.

“Basically it’s a propaganda campaign,” said Brown University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle. “And you don’t have to use the words ‘climate change’. What they’re doing is they’re seeding in the collective unconscious the idea that fossil fuels equals progress and the good life.”

Advertisements like Energy Transfer Partners’ “Our Lives Are Petroleum” campaign, which has been running since 2021, also serve the purpose of shaming people into keeping quiet on climate unless they have successfully rid their own lives of hydrocarbons. The logic goes: if you use a phone or drive a car, or really, if you live in the modern world at all, you’re the problem. Not the companies that have worked for decades to make their products seem indispensable and block any alternatives to them.

4. ‘We’re part of the solution’

Nothing keeps away regulation like promises of voluntary solutions that make it seem like the fossil fuel industry is really trying. In a 2020 exposé, Greenpeace’s investigative newsroom, Unearthed, caught an Exxon lobbyist on camera explaining this tactic had worked with a carbon tax to head off emissions regulations and how the company was pursuing the same strategy with plastic. Working with the American Chemistry Council to roll out voluntary measures like “advanced recycling”, the lobbyist, Keith McCoy, said the goal was to “get ahead of government intervention”.

As with climate change, McCoy explained, if the industry can make it seem as though it was working on solutions, it could keep outright bans on single-use plastics at bay. Today, this narrative shows up in the industry’s push for carbon capture, biofuels, and methane-based hydrogen solutions like blue, purple, and turquoise hydrogen. We also see it in the industry’s embrace of the term “low carbon” to describe not only fossil fuel–enabling solutions like carbon capture, but also “natural gas”, which industry lobbyists are successfully selling to politicians as a climate solution.

5. ‘The world’s greatest neighbor’

Just in case people still aren’t accepting of dirty air, dirty water and climate change, the fossil fuel industry funds museums, sports, aquariums, and schools, serving the dual purpose of cleaning up its image and making communities feel dependent on the industry and thus less likely to criticize it.

Both journalists and their audiences have more power to combat climate disinformation than it might feel when they’re awash in it. Understanding the industry’s classic narratives is a good starting point.

Debunking false claims is a critical next step.

• Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative climate journalist, founder of Critical Frequency, and executive editor of Drilled Media

• Kyle Pope is executive director of strategic initiatives and co-founder of Covering Climate Now, and a former editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review

Neil Goodwin was charged over his protest outside parliament in 2023. However, a judge saw it for nonsense - and here, Neil tells all.

[Click to listen to the article, and support the Canary]

Last week the Canary ran my story A disabled man is being PROSECUTED for blocking parliament with his MOBILITY SCOOTER just before my trial at Westminster Magistrate’s Court. Here’s the full story.

The climate crisis: very real, and very now

On July 19 2023, exactly a year on from the hottest day on record, and the devastating Wennington wild fire in East London which completely destroyed four houses, I had travelled up to parliament to raise the alarm about the effects a climate catastrophe will have on the disabled community and vulnerable groups, the old, and the frail.

I have multiple sclerosis (MS) and the hottest day in 2022 really drained what little energy I usually have. I felt like the plants in my garden, completely wilted, my leaves turning brown. It was the first time that I’d had to be pushed into my garden in a wheelchair. We rescued an exhausted robin, unable to even fly up to the bird bath, cooling off in a tub of rancid water. It was truly horrifying.

In early July 2023, I attended a talk at the Southbank Centre with Greta Thunberg and was shocked to learn that the government was preparing to sign new, and very significant, oil and gas licenses.

I learnt that the Rosebank project, the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield 80 miles off the Shetland coast in the North Atlantic, would have the potential if it were burned to produce as much carbon dioxide as running 56 coal-fired power stations for a year.

So, at a time when the UN Chief António Guterres started using the term ‘Global Boiling’, to describe the acceleration of terrifying climate impacts, Rishi Sunak was preparing to effectively tear up our commitment to Net Zero and the Paris Agreement and block our only escape route from global catastrophe.

Warnings from the 1990s

I am a documentary film maker.

In the late 90’s, when ‘Global Warming’ was very much considered to be junk science, I made a film called ‘Turned out Nice Again – Britain under climate change’, which set out to show what life would be like in the-near-future, about 2060, if we failed to curb our use of fossil fuels. Stuff I thought I’d never have a front row seat to witness:

Turned Out Nice Again - Britain under Climate Change

It was during that time that I learnt that CO2 emissions take a while to affect the climate. Estimates range from between 10 to 30 years. So, the impacts we are experiencing today relate to past emissions, say the invasion of Iraq, and present emissions will affect the atmosphere roughly 10 to 30 years from now.

So, I knew that with CO2 it wasn’t simply a case of just turning off the tap. Phasing out needed to happen gradually and consistently, allowing the economy and society the time to adjust. It couldn’t be business as usual right up to the 2050 deadline, the deadline stipulated in the Paris Agreement, and then bother. It most certainly couldn’t involve utilising new oil and gas fields.

Disabled people taking a stand

So, extremely angry, I had travelled up to Westminster on a Wednesday, as I say, exactly one year on from the hottest day and the Wennington wild-fire, and at around the time PMQ’s would have been winding up and parked my mobility scooter right outside the Carriage Entrance to parliament.

I had dressed up the basket on the front to look like it was on fire, with a warning sign showing a wheelchair bound person caught between a fire and a flood; referencing the Wennington wildfire:

Image

Also, the danger from flash flooding, which was tragically emphasised in the run up to my plea hearing by the death of an 83-year-old Chesterfield woman called Maureen Gilbert, who drowned in her home during Storm Babet, as she was unable to escape the rapidly rising water inside her terrace home owing to mobility problems.

‘I cannot run from a climate emergency’

I had carried a placard with fake flames coming out of the top that said, ‘I cannot run from a Climate Emergency’. Neither run literally, because of my disability, nor run from what I felt was my social responsibility to try and spotlight the implications of a climate emergency, not just for the disabled community, but for all vulnerable people – the old and the frail.

I had asked the first police officer who approached me, I believe my arresting officer, to turn on his body cam and record a safety announcement. Me detailing my various disabilities. I also have ankylosing spondylitis (AS), an arthritic like condition that fuses your joints, that has left me with a completely fused neck, and completely fused lower spine, called a bamboo spine.

I explained exactly why I was there, and I was told that I was liable to be arrested:

Image

I remember asking him to see it not as an arrest, but a demonstration in how difficult it would be to save someone like me from a fire at a moment’s notice and to carry me to the safety of a police cell. To see it as an exercise in preparedness. To which, I remember him saying, ‘If you were in a burning building, I’d throw you over my shoulder and carry you out.’

And I remember thinking, if you threw me over your shoulder, it would be like throwing a 13 stone ironing board over your shoulder, as my back and neck are almost entirely fused, and you’d probably drop me and/or break my neck in the process. It certainly wouldn’t be that quick and easy.

Surrounded by cops

My plan was to attract a swarm of cops around me, then use them as bait to attract the press, thereby elevating my protest into newsworthiness, then get nicked.

No D locks, no superglue, no seriously pissed off commuters, just a very uncooperative seriously disabled man on a ‘burning’ mobility scooter, a potential public relations nightmare, saying, ‘come and have a go if you think you’re strong enough’. Or indeed, only if you’ve got suitably accessible police infrastructure. Which I had hoped to find out.

I was given every opportunity to leave, invited on numerous occasions to carry out my protest along the pavement, away from the entrance. But it felt right to remain just where I was. Right in the middle of what they like to call, ominously, The Sterile Zone:

Image

It’s strange, but I felt both my strongest and weakest at the same time. Surrounded by cops, one of whom apparently had a best friend with MS. None of whom could lay a finger on me, through fear of breaking something.

Who knew that fragility could become a super-power? Through-out, the burning issue of climate change held aloft, perhaps barring the way of the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who’s motorcade would have usually swept past right about then.

One of the police mentioned a secret tunnel right through to Downing Street and a short journey by golf cart.

Finally nicked

I was arrested under the 143 Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, which I thought was quite apt, as I sincerely believed that I was acting socially responsibly raising these urgent issues, especially for the disabled, the vulnerable and the frail. Those who would be shoved onto the front line of the government’s war against the weather.

I later found out that that particular law had made it illegal to carry a sleeping bag in Parliament Square, in answer to Brian Haw’s more than a decade of dissent and Occupy.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t plucked to safety from my flaming mobility scooter. So, no dodgy optic of me being carried away.

I waited eight months for my day in court. With countless sleepless nights, abject terror and righteousness slugging it out all through the winter, fretting over fines, and legal costs, and the bailiffs seizing my stuff. You can take the tele, but don’t take my Penny Black!

Preparing for court

So, I had done myself a favour and talked to Andy at Green & Black Cross, who straightened me out on quite a few things.

Stuff like, the district judge that I would be getting at my trial last week, having a better understanding of the law than your ordinary magistrate, preferring to be addressed as ‘sir’ or just plain ‘Judge’ to ‘Your Honour’, and that he doesn’t wear the silly Les Misérables head gear. Unlike my nightmares, where he’s also wearing a black hankie.

The good news was that I wouldn’t be getting the dodgy hanging judge Silas Reid, the one who is trying to take away jury trials, basically redact that last little bit of the Magna Carta, and does you for contempt for even mentioning the word ‘climate’. He’s terrorising Just Stop Oil in the Crown Court.

I’d decided to represent myself, as, even though legal stuff just goes right over the top of my head, I’d learn on my feet and try and blag my way through the proceedings. Apparently, you get more leeway. Plus, I’d have a great McKenzie friend, called Josh, courtesy Green & Black, to whisper advice.

Climate change and the impact on disabled people

On the day, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) got off to a very bad start by disclosing crucial documents a quarter of an hour before the hearing. Very shoddy, I must say. But understandable, considering the mountain of paperwork Just Stop Oil is generating. No wonder the guy looked depressed. This apparently pissed-off the judge big time.

Before we got underway, there was just time to take the plea of a Met police officer accused of groping a colleague.

Right from the off, the judge began by making it clear that the existence of a climate emergency was not in question. So, all that evidence I’d gathered, and helpfully stuffed into a ‘bundle’ for the judge and CPS, couldn’t be heard.

I’d spent a lot of time looking at the government’s National Adaptation Programme (NAP,) particularly an outlook from Stephen Belcher, the Chief Scientist at the Met Office:

Climate change is happening now… Heavy rainfall events that can lead to flash flooding are expected to become more frequent and intense across the country. Summer temperatures above 40oC, seen for the first time in July 2022, will become more commonplace by the end of the 21st century.

Also the ‘UK Climate Change Risk Assessment’ (CCRA), the latest one published in January 2022, six months before the Wennington wild fire. Its Executive Summary sounding like an Extinction Rebellion leaflet:

Climate change is happening now. It is one of the biggest challenges of our generation and has already begun to cause irreversible damage to our planet and way of life. We have clear evidence demonstrating the pace of warming in recent decades and the impacts we will face should this continue. As we redouble our efforts to achieve net zero, we must also continue to raise ambitions on adaptation to ensure the UK is resilient to the challenges of a warming world.

CCRA3 landed on cabinet desks in January 2022, six months before the Wennington wild fire, giving us a snapshot of what the government knew about the seriousness and challenges of climate change at that point in time.

So the case would almost entirely revolve around Article Ten of the Human Rights Act 1998, and The Freedom of Expression, and how reasonable I was acting in pursuing this right.

Eight hours of cops bleeding their hearts

The prosecution set out the issues. I was arrested blah blah blah… and showed the body cam footage of my arrest. Me looking almost sullen. Even rude. Not saying a word, as my arresting officer cautioned me.

By that time, I had had two hours of eight cops worth of near constant questions and pleading and befriending and guilt trips. ‘My best friend has got MS.’ ‘I’m a lesbian.’ ‘My dad is dying of cancer and I was planning on visiting him.’ That kind of thing. So, I looked exhausted:

Image

My arresting officer took the stand. I counted five mentions of Just Stop Oil, who were being mass arrested on Parliament Square at the time of my action. Sorry JSO, but I was keen to distance myself from you.

The judge asked me what if there was any campaign group that I was connected to. I told him I was loosely affiliated with DPAC, Disabled People Against the Cuts, although my placard had said DPACC, Disabled People Against Climate Change.

It turned out that the Met had just the one suitably modified van to transport disabled people to the nick, codenamed Pixie1 (my old road protestor mates will appreciate the name). And that had been on its way to Croydon that day with part of the latest Just Stop Oil mass arrest. JSO had been having their last big bash before the summer recess and had pretty much used up every available van and cell inside the M25, including Pixie1.

I’d heard of the arrest of a disabled JSO protestor called Ari, who had been arrested, and witnessed the police practically begging a black cab to take her to the station, and had often wondered whether the cops could possibly handle a group action.

CPS trying their best to smear a disabled man

The CPS and the judge went to great lengths to try and ascertain the size of the gap I had left at the entrance, which they agreed was a double gate.

Did I block anyone? No.

Would I block anyone? Perhaps.

Slowly they scrolled through the grainy, partly obscured Body Cam footage looking for the right angle. Looking to see if I had completely blocked the highway, or whether a vehicle could still get by. Once I realised what they were doing I couldn’t help but give a little chuckle. I had the perfect photo taken by my mate Gareth Morris, where you could clearly see the gap.

When I showed them Gareth’s pic, and that there was plenty of space, the prosecution argued that a vehicle still wouldn’t be able to pass by safely. Whereupon the judge gave me my second spontaneous chuckle of the day, pointing out there were plenty of policeman there to stand between me and a vehicle, to make sure it was safe. He really had it in for the CPS that day.

‘Doing my bit’

I trundled my wheelchair up to the stand, where I dropped my notes, and made a futile attempt to pick them up. I told the court that according to the MS society’s website:

excessive heat can often make MS worse. Which when you consider that we already suffer greatly from fatigue, often mentioned as one of the worst symptoms of MS, the promise of more days, perhaps entire weeks, of 40-degree heat, would make life impossible and intolerable.

I broke down twice on the stand. Once when I spoke of my devastated garden on 19 July 2022, and once when I spoke of the tragic and terrifying drowning of Maureen Gilbert, during Storm Babet, one of the people I said the government had thrown onto the front line of their war against the weather.

I told the judge that I saw this as doing my bit as a 58-year-old man and decried the 20 somethings who were being imprisoned for demanding a future. A future that I felt that I could at least now look in the eye.

A judge sees sense

We waited for the verdict for about half an hour. Me convinced that, whilst the judge might say nice things about my convictions, his hands would be tied legally.

When he came back, after the usher had demanded ‘All Stand’, and according to my friend Saskia’s excellent notes, he mentioned ‘reasonable excuse.’ That ‘The defendant was there to protest under Article 10’. That it had been about ‘Government failure and the granting of new fossil fuel leases.’ About ‘How this would affect people with disabilities. How high temperatures directly affect people with MS.’ The risk of fires, and ‘on the anniversary of the Wennington fire.’

I was so made up that I’d been successful in linking all these elements together on my day in court.

I was, ‘peaceful and dignified.’ And, crucially, there were doubts that it I ‘can be properly said to have been blocking the gates.’ That, ‘Not one vehicle entered or left’ whilst I was demonstrating, so there was ‘no evidence of obstruction.’ I was ‘fully cooperative’ and moved once I had secured my day in court. I was “passionate, articulate and honest in everything that [I] said’. I was proper blushing by this stage, but still expecting the words, ‘but’ or ‘unfortunately’.

He went on. Exploring ‘the balance of rights under Article 10’, and ‘reasonable excuse’, about ‘Zeigler’, which gets mentioned a lot. To be honest, there were loads of legals that just went over the top of my head, including the classic what the hell does that mean? line ‘The occupation was more than minor but less than major.’

I fought the law…

Whereupon, he suddenly blurted out ‘Not guilty. You are free to go.’ Leaving me to just stare into space, until the usher finally chucked me out.

So yes, I can now say that I fought the law, and the law… lost. No guesses as to what tune I first played when I finally got home.

Featured images and additional images via Gareth Morris

Disabled activist Neil Goodwin was arrested under the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act outside parliament

The below article is an opinion piece from Neil Goodwin, an activist who was arrested for blocking an entrance to parliament with his mobility scooter

[Click to listen to the article]

I’m in Westminster Magistrate’s Court at 10am on Wednesday 3 April, charged with blocking the entrance to parliament in my mobility scooter; I’m disabled, living with multiple sclerosis (MS). This is a bit of what I am hoping to tell the judge.

Protesting the climate crisis as a disabled person

On 19 July 2023, exactly a year on from the hottest day on record and the devastating Wennington wild fire, I travelled up to parliament to protest. It was a Wednesday, and Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) was on – the busiest day of the week for parliament and for the media who cover it.

I positioned myself in front of the carriage entrance, facing towards the road:

[Photo]

I had dressed up the basket on the front of my mobility scooter to look like it was on fire, with a warning sign on the from showing a disabled wheelchair user caught between a fire and a flood – referencing the Wennington wildfire exactly a year previously.

It also referenced the danger from flash flooding, which was tragically emphasised in the run up to my plea hearing by the death of an 83-year-old Chesterfield woman called Maureen Gilbert, who drowned in her home during Storm Babet, as she was unable to escape the rapidly rising water inside her terrace home owing to mobility problems.

I carried a placard with fake flames coming out of the top, that said, ‘I cannot run from a Climate Emergency’. Neither run literally, because of my disability, nor run from what I feel is my social responsibility to try and spotlight the implications of a climate emergency, not just for disabled communities, but for all vulnerable people – the old and the frail.

Cops provide a concerning response

I asked the first police officer who approached me, I believe my arresting officer, to turn on his body cam and record a safety announcement – me detailing my various disabilities.

I explained exactly why I was there, and I was told that I was liable to be arrested.

I remember asking one officer, I think my arresting officer, to see it not as an arrest, but a demonstration in how difficult it would be to save someone like me from a fire at a moment’s notice and carry me to the safety of a police cell. To see it as an exercise in preparedness, as it were – to which, I remember him saying:

If you were in a burning building, I’d throw you over my shoulder and carry you out.

I remember thinking, if you threw me over your shoulder, it would be like throwing a 13-stone ironing board over your shoulder, as my back and neck are almost entirely fused, and you’d probably drop me and/or break my neck in the process. It certainly wouldn’t be that quick and easy.

I was given every opportunity to leave, invited on numerous occasions to carry out my protest along the pavement, away from the entrance. But it felt right to remain just where I was: right in the middle of what they like to call the Sterile Zone.

Now prosecuting disabled people to acting ‘socially responsibly’

It’s strange, but I felt both my strongest and weakest at the same time. Surrounded by cops, one of whom apparently had a best friend with MS, yet none of whom could lay a finger on me, through fear of breaking something.

Who knew that fragility could become a super-power; the burning issue of climate change held aloft, perhaps barring the way of prime minister Rishi Sunak who’s motorcade would have usually swept past by then.

So, I was arrested under section 143 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which I thought was quite apt, as I sincerely believe that I was acting socially responsibly raising these urgent issues, especially for disabled, vulnerable and frail people; those who will be shoved onto the front line of this Tory government’s war against the weather.

I pleaded ‘not guilty’ because I don’t think that I did anything wrong. My mum told me to tell the judge that I had seen the error of my ways – when in fact some of us were beginning to feel a real terror in our days:

[Click through to article to watch video]

The Labour Party held its flagship business conference Thursday, “Britain’s Future”, attended by more than 400 people including executives from Goldman Sachs, Google, AstraZeneca and Airbus, each paying £995 for a seat.

Sponsored by HSBC and Bloomberg, the event was the culmination of Labour’s pre-election pitch to big business, designed to make clear that the party will rule more directly and aggressively in the interests of shareholders than any government in British history.

The delegates were hard won. At its party conference last year, Labour raised close to £2 million selling exhibition hall space and doubled its revenue and attendance for business day compared with 2022. Shadow Business Secretary Jonathon Reynolds was described by the Guardian at the time as being on a “breakfast-time charm campaign” to match former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s infamous “prawn cocktail offensive” with the City of London. Reynolds met with BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Toyota, among others.

In December, Labour appointed an advisory panel to the party of 10 senior figures from the financial services sector, including the chairs of Barclays, Abrdn, Schroders, Legal and General and Prudential, and the chief executives of YBS, Amadeus Capital and the London Stock Exchange Group.

Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s shadow economic secretary, said the panel “demonstrates Labour’s commitment to the sector and our determination to put it at the heart of our plans for growth. It builds on the extensive engagement we have done across industry to meet banks, insurers, fintechs, asset managers, investors, payments providers, consumer groups, and trade associations.”

David Postings, chief executive of UK Finance, commented that Labour “understand the importance of the sector and capital markets in particular. They are very keen to be seen to be doing things even if they are not vote winners.”

At the World Economic Forum in Davos this month, also attended by Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves joined a breakfast meeting hosted by JP Morgan and told those present, “With Labour, Britain will be open to business. We will restore stability and security into our economy. We will restore Britain’s reputation as a place to do business. And we will be a trusted partner with business in delivering the change our country and our economy needs.”

Last week, Labour published the report, “A New Partnership: A long-term plan for Government business relations to power our economy and society”, carried out by prominent business consultant Iain Anderson, a Conservative Party member of 39 years who quit to help Starmer’s party. Reynolds welcomed the publication as “an important step in putting the voice of business at the heart of government.”

Faced with the disasters inflicted on the economy by the Tory Brexit project and the unravelling of the faction-ridden Tory government, epitomised by Liz Truss’s abortive premiership but continued under her replacement Rishi Sunak, Labour’s appeals have been well received in boardrooms and executive offices. Places for Thursday’s conference sold out within hours when tickets were released last October.

A poll of 500 business leaders carried out by Opinium for the Labour Party this month found that 49 percent preferred a Labour victory at the next election, versus 34 percent for the Tories—a reversal of the balance of their actual votes in the 2019 election.

Starmer and Reeves pushed their case Thursday, announcing that there would be no cap on bankers’ bonusses and that Labour would keep corporation tax at the Tories’ rock-bottom 25 percent, the lowest in the G7, for at least five years (it was 35 percent when Margaret Thatcher left office in 1990). Labour even left the door open to cutting the rate further, with Reeves promising to “act” if the UK’s “competitiveness is under threat”.

Reeves also spoke about the “spirit of partnership with business that will guide the next Labour government” and how “a more unstable world” meant that “business and government must work together like never before.”

She promised, “when we say we want to work with business, that there is no policy we can announce, no plan that can be drawn up in Whitehall, that will not rely on the engagement of business, we mean it.

“That this Labour Party sees profit not as something to be disdained but as a mark of business succeeding.”

The shadow chancellor again swore, “I will not waiver from iron-clad fiscal rules,” referring to her “decade as an economist at the Bank of England” as proof of her credentials.

Starmer picked up the thread, stressing Labour’s “commitment to always put economic stability first. We cannot and will not allow public spending needs, however important, to threaten the stability of our finances.”

He offered his own hymn to “private enterprise,” which “is how we pay our way in the world” and denounced “the caricature that British business only serves shareholder interest” as “lazy and out of date.”

Labour, he said, “is the party of business,” and had not just “opened our doors” to the corporations but “taken decisions together as equal partners in the venture of national renewal. Your fingerprints are on every one of our five missions.”

Keir Starmer on xitter: "Labour is the party of business.

The two speeches were an open admission that big business will dictate Labour government policy. Promises of a “new deal for workers” and a “level[ling] up of workers’ rights in a way that’s not been attempted for decades” are flimsy window dressing for an agenda drawn up by the banks and corporations.

The working class must prepare itself now to defeat that agenda. It must recognise what a Labour government would mean. Starmer is already widely reviled in the working class as “another Blair”, but the reality is that a Starmer government would be incomparably worse.

Margaret Thatcher described Blairism as “her greatest achievement” for continuing much of her economic agenda, including privatisation. But Blair at least initially tried to portray himself as something different, a proponent of some mythical “Third Way” rather than an untrammelled worshiper of the “free market”.

Moreover, helped by more favourable economic conditions, the Blair-Brown governments of 1996/7 to 2009/10 increased education spending and health spending as a share of GDP, with overall state spending growing by £326.98 billion in real terms, or 9.6 percentage points of GDP, the largest increase of any 13-year period back to 1955.

Blair was despised above all for his having taken the UK into war with Iraq in 2003 based on lies. The last Labour government’s death sentence, however, was the 2008 financial crash and its throwing hundreds of billions at the UK’s failing banks. And it was Labour that in this way initiated the “Age of Austerity” proclaimed by the incoming Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition led by David Cameron.

Almost a decade-and-a-half later, amid a deepening economic crisis and with workers’ wages continuing to fall, Starmer’s Labour Party even before taking office wags its finger and warns “there is no magic money tree,” while ruling out any tax increases on the wealthy.

The one area of public spending Labour is happy to talk about increasing is on the military. Britain is already heavily involved in the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and is the United States’ leading partner in the war in the Middle East, now including attacks on the Houthis in Yemen and Iran-allied forces, begun by Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. These are two fronts of an eruption of imperialist violence directed against Russia and China.

This is at the same time a war against the international working class. Social and economic life will have to be torn apart and rebuilt on a war footing to sustain such a global military onslaught, with devastating consequences for workers. Talk of lifting defence spending to 3 percent, 5 percent and beyond of GDP means clawing billions from the working class through wage cuts, ramped up exploitation, the decimation of essential services and the destruction of many jobs through automation and AI.

Labour’s declaration that it is “the party of NATO” is as much a statement of class war as its promise to govern as “the party of business”.

For the trade union leaders to present the Labour Party as a progressive alternative to the Tory government is to deceive and disarm the working class, which must urgently prepare a counteroffensive against the twin parties of austerity, inequality and war.

It is impossible for workers to secure peaceful, dignified and fulfilled lives without removing both these organisations from power and replacing them with a government of the working class—the real producers of social wealth—led by its own socialist party. The challenge confronting workers today is to join in the building of that leadership, the Socialist Equality Party.

This scene in Wicked as They Come (1956) I happened upon last night made me think of so many antiwork posts lol.. I thought it'd make a good reaction gif but my skills are limited 😂

What an icon ✊

Happened upon this movie last night on tv, definitely going to have to give it another watch when I'm more alert, some fantastic critiques of the advertising industry and capitalism in general. This clip had me cracking up..

If you're in the UK it'll be on all4, otherwise I'm sure it exists to watch elsewhere.

'The Bill only targets the less well-off. There is no equivalent surveillance of legislators who accept payments to advance the interests of their corporate paymasters.'

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

George Orwell’s iconic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, warns of a dystopian world where The Party or the government undermines people’s rights, independence and autonomy through fear and propaganda. Constant surveillance is a key weapon for disciplining people and shaping their minds.

That world has arrived in the UK, the self-proclaimed mother of parliaments. The new tyranny isn’t ushered in by some communist, socialist or military regime but by a right-wing elected government.

The latest weapon is the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill which puts the bank accounts of 22.4m people under constant surveillance. In true Orwellian doublespeak, the government claims that the Bill allows “the country to realise new post-Brexit freedoms” and links surveillance to people’s fears about frauds.

The Bill uses developments in electronic transactions and artificial intelligence to place the poor, disabled, sick, old and pregnant women under surveillance. It gives Ministers and government agencies powers to direct businesses, particularly banks, and financial institutions, to mass monitor individuals receiving welfare payments, even when there is no suspicion or any sign of fraudulent activity. No court order is needed and affected individuals will not be informed. The Bill enables Ministers to make any further regulations without a vote in parliament.

Currently, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can request details of bank accounts and transactions on a case-by-case basis on suspicion of fraudulent activity.

The government says the Bill “would allow regular checks to be carried out on the bank accounts held by benefit claimants to spot increases in their savings which push them over the benefit eligibility threshold, or when people send more time overseas than the benefit rules allow for. This will help identify fraud [and] take action more quickly.”

A pernicious aspect of the Bill (clause 8) is that makes it very difficult for people to find out the information held about them by government agencies. Requests can more easily be dismissed as vexatious or excessive.

On 29 November 2023, the Bill was passed by the House of Commons by 269 to 31 votes. A Labour Party spokesperson said “We support the Bill” and the party abstained on the vote. It will now come to the Lords.

The new surveillance powers are to be applied to around 22.4m people claiming a variety of benefits. The UK has some 12.6 million recipients of the state pension, and many retirees claim means-tested benefits because the state pension is too low to live on. So retirees too are included in the 22.4m people subject to surveillance.

How prevalent is benefit fraud? The government estimates that for the year 2023 the benefit fraud was £6.4bn (2.7% of total). The government claims that mass surveillance would reduce fraud by £600 million over the next five years though this somehow became £500m during the debate in the Commons, i.e. £100m-£120m a year. During 2023-24, the government is expected to spend some £1,189bn. So, how significant is a potential saving of £100m-£120m in that context? Or is the Bill just distracting attention away from other objectives by demonising the less well-off?

The focus on bank accounts suggests that the government is looking for unusual patterns. So, if you give a lump sum to a loved one for Christmas, birthday, holiday or home repairs, and it passes through a bank, the government could seize upon that as evidence of excess resources and reduce or stop benefits. Suppose a poor person pawns some household items for a few pounds and that temporarily boosts bank balance. Would that person be penalised?

Any government serious and even-handed about tackling fraud would arguably extend surveillance to arenas other than just benefits, but it does not. Billions of pounds have been lost due to government related frauds in pandemic management, Covid loans and contracts for cronies, but none of the individuals involved are under financial surveillance.

The Bill only targets the less well-off. There is no equivalent surveillance of legislators who accept payments to advance the interests of their corporate paymasters. Earlier this year, in a sting operation former chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and former health secretary, Matt Hancock, agreed to work for £10,000 a day to further the interests of a company, but there is no surveillance of the bank accounts for former ministers.

There is no surveillance of the bank accounts of bankers engaging in illicit financial flows. The defence industry has a long history of engaging in bribery and corruption to secure contracts, but its bank accounts are not subject to surveillance. Energy companies also do the same, but neither theirs nor their directors’ bank accounts are subject to surveillance.

Since 2010, HMRC has failed to collect between £450bn and £1,500bn of taxes due to evasion, avoidance and errors. Most avoidance schemes are designed and marketed by bankers, accountants and lawyers, but the Bill does not put their bank accounts under surveillance. Major accounting firms are central to concocting abusive avoidance schemes, but despite strong court judgments, no major accounting firm has been investigate, fined or prosecuted. Research shows that people are 23 times more likely to be prosecuted for benefit offences that tax offences.

This Bill is part of a long line of laws that frames the working class as the problem because they withdraw labour to improve their pay and working conditions. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for workers to take strike action. So, what are workers to do about worsening pay? People might protest, but the The Public Order Act 2023 has criminalised protests that can cause “serious disruption” to two or more people or to an organisation in a public place.

The government blames the working class for social ills without addressing any of the underlying social problems. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss described UK workers as the “worst idlers in the world” even though they work some of the longest hours in Europe. However, work does not pay enough even though corporate profits are booming. Some 38% of the 6.2m people on Universal Credit are in employment. 58% are women as gender pay gap persists, and the government does little about the underlying issues. Those receiving low wages turn to social security support and become subject to surveillance.

The scapegoating of the working class is carefully wrapped in claims about Brexit opportunities and fraud prevention. In this way, the government (or The Party, as Orwell called it) erodes people’s ability to think rationally and makes them believe its propaganda. People are constantly told that they must sacrifice their liberties and freedoms for the greater good of the society, which is equated with greater good of capital and wealthy elites. The government thinks this commitment will somehow make people forget about the harsh realities of 7.8m waiting list for NHS hospitals, hungry children, crumbling schools, cost of living, poverty and economic failures. People need to produce counter narratives to check the continuous erosion of hard-won rights.

Impact assessment forecasts that prosecutions will rocket, but claims staff will take ‘account of circumstances and vulnerabilities’ of benefit recipients and ‘no automatic decisions will be made on data alone’
New laws allowing the Department for Work and Pensions to monitor the bank accounts of benefit claimants are predicted to lead to 7,400 extra prosecutions for fraud each year – resulting in 250 custodial sentences.

The forecasts are made as part of the department’s newly published impact assessment for proposed legislation that would require financial institutions to provide government with data on account holders that receive benefits. The aim of the new law would be to alert the DWP to benefits being paid in error or obtained fraudulently when a recipient has understated their savings or income. Currently, the DWP can only undertake checks of account data for a named individual who is already under suspicion of fraud.

The ability to monitor potential fraud in a more proactive way will result in “an additional 74,000 prosecution cases, 2,500 custodial sentences and 23,000 applications for legal aid” over the 10-year period considered by the assessment.

This would seemingly represent an enormous rise on the current levels of prosecution with only 487 cases referred to prosecutors by the DWP during the 2022-23 year, according to recent evidence submitted to the Public Accounts Committee. Over the past three years, an annual average of 385 people have been convicted based on these referrals.

The assessment document indicated that DWP caseworkers will bear in mind the potential vulnerability of claimants and automation will be used responsibly.

“[This] measure can potentially include vulnerable people, [and] these areas will be explored further in the equality impact assessment,” the document said. “We are clear, however, that no automatic decisions will be made based on data alone, and DWP staff will follow the usual business processes when looking into any cases, taking account of circumstances and wider vulnerabilities before deciding on a course of action.”

The DWP said that it has already had discussions with banks, building societies, and trade body UK Finance and has been “clear that any data received under this measure should not be seen as indicative of any financial crime” in and of itself.

“Many claimants will have a legitimate, authorised reason to hold savings in excess of capital benefit rules – disregards for injury compensation, for example – and in many cases, overpayments could have been caused by genuine claimant error,” the assessment said. “Given this, we have been clear that there should be no action to de-bank claimants.”

The department also said that it will make sure to “protect privacy… only looking at data that is signalling potential benefit fraud and error and only drawing in data on DWP customers, [and] will create a system for [banks] that is effective, simple, and secure and data will be transferred, received, and stored safely”.

The assessment concludes that the proposed “measure is proportionate and targeted and will help DWP tackle fraud and error more effectively”.

‘A clear message’
The department projects that implementing the data-sharing policy will cost £370m over the coming years, and then £30m a year in staffing and other operational costs from the 2031/32 year onwards.

The initiative will deliver overall benefits of £2.93bn – equating to a net return of £2.57bn, it forecasts.

Plans have been made to test the data-sharing with two – unspecified – banks or building societies in 2025, with a full-scale rollout across all institutions from 2030 onwards.

This will encompass all of the 15 banks and building societies that, collectively, receive 97% of all benefit payments. This includes: Bank of Scotland; Barclays; Halifax; HSBC; Lloyds; Metro Bank; Monzo; NatWest; Nationwide; Santander; Starling; The Co-Op; Royal Bank of Scotland; TSB; and Yorkshire Bank.

While extending data sharing to cover the smaller institutions that constitute the other 3% “would likely be ineffective” and overly burdensome, the DWP believes it is “important to not shut off this option in primary legislation as we do not want fraudsters to see this as a loophole and change their banking approach to deliberately circumvent our measure”.

Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride said: “These new powers send a very clear message to benefit fraudsters – we won’t stand for it. These people are taking the taxpayer for a ride and it is right that we do all we can to bring them to justice. These powers will be used proportionately, ensuring claimants’ data is safely protected while rooting out fraudsters at the earliest possible opportunity.”

The plans for giving the DWP access to bank data were announced as part of a range of what the government described as “common-sense changes to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill”.

Other proposed legal changes would see social media firms required to retain the data of users that have died by suicide. This information “could then be used in subsequent investigations or inquests”, according to the government.

UK counter-terror police would also be empowered under the updated law to retain indefinitely the biometric data of individuals with a conviction overseas.

Secretary of state for science, innovation and technology Michelle Donelan, said: “Britain has seized a key Brexit opportunity – boosting small businesses, protecting consumers and cracking down on criminal enterprises like nuisance calling and benefit fraud. These changes protect our privacy and data while also injecting common sense into the system – whether it is cracking down on cookies, scrapping pointless paperwork which stifles productivity, tackling benefit fraud or making it easier to protect our citizens from criminals. These changes help to establish the UK as a world-leading data economy; one that puts consumers and businesses at the centre and removes the ‘one-size-fits-all’ barriers that have held many British businesses back.”

The amendments are set to go through the report stage in the House of Commons tomorrow, before then making their way on to the House of Lords.

E: archive.org gave me some options which I need to test, but for now I'm calling it SOLVED, thanks!

I know I'm not meant to ask for a specific title, but it's the second in the series where you age up your empire wink wink..
Looking for the HD edition in English, so far I just keep getting Russian versions, if I risk downloading at all, since most the sites that are coming up in my search look dodgy af..

Posted in a comment, but it really does belong here.
If you're here to defend cops I will just block you, don't waste your breath, ACAB.