Labour government preparing to hike income taxes - blaming bond markets. not one adult in the room will say the obvious: 1. Britain's fiscal rules are shambles 2. Bank of England has too much power over fiscal decisions 3. ignore bond vigilantes www.ft.com/content/5c8f...

Isn't this what it's all about? Small acts that add up to something bigger: a movement for a better Britain – for 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚 who calls our country home ♥️ Thank you so much to the 38 Degrees supporter who sent us this message after taking action with our #RefugeesWelcomeHere poster.

“The UK has a system in which a TV channel can pay a political leader almost half a million pounds a year and give him an hour an evening to react to his rivals without breaking a single rule.”

Groundbreaking discussions on environmental crises are happening in Edinburgh – and you can join online! 📅 24 Oct | 14:00–15:30 BST 👉 Register: jncc.gov.uk/news/scotlan... #JustDontWaste #ClimateAction 🧵 @royalsoced.bsky.social, @naturescot.bsky.social, @jncc-ceo.bsky.social

"Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa. Each one of us becomes a financial slave. We are told to repay. We are told it is a moral issue. But it is not... If we don't repay, the lenders will not die. But if we do repay, we will die."

Unusually balming #bbcqt last night, at least for the first question on immigration

Part 2

This short piece co-authored with Alex Yates shows why the misuse of populism plays right in the hands of the far right (Annoyingly, the app is not allowing me to tag colleagues, but follow them!) theconversation.com/the-word-pop...

Our supporters wrote in about our campaign against hospital car park charges. If patients and NHS workers are having to pay to go to the hospital, the system is broken.

When you consider the *ecocide* alongside the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza, you begin to grasp the totality of the Israeli state’s attempt to eliminate both the Palestinians and their homeland. My column today. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Aneurin Bevan resigned in 1951 because fees were introduced into the NHS. 3 years after its inception the government was already introducing charges. It's high time the NHS got back to its roots and abolished dental fees

I'm a little tense at the start of the UNDP's Learning for Nature course on biodiversity finance that started this week. Not yet said the word "de-risking" but some of the language here is eerily familiar

Think this is going to go down as a serious misstep for Farage. Millions and their friends and family will be sitting up at this news right now www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I was never a proper journalist but I always resisted the temptation to use words like "as" and "amid" to link two concepts without evidence in my articles

Power is the rock on which truth founders. The mainstream media, with a few exceptions, is a single-issue lobby group, whose purpose is to assert the rights of capital. Here's what I've learnt about the industry in 40 years in journalism. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I guess I'm not the only person who gets more annoyed at the questions during Question Time than most of the answers

Beautiful poetry. The old kings honoring the new. Mere descendants of those with the barbarity to amass untold wealth while surrounded by poverty - now throwing a lavish dinner for those with the stomach to do it in the here and now

"Reality has a pronounced left-wing bias"

Yesterday, the CEO of Barclays outright threatened to cut jobs and reduce UK investment if the government taxed banks in the Budget. But it's already doing both of those things. Tell the Chancellor not to let banks hold our economy to ransom 👉 bit.ly/TaxTheBanks

Warning! The rightwing junktanks behind the Tories’ worst disasters still have the keys to No 10 | George Monbiot

At the recent financing for development conference in Seville #ffd4, people might have been forgiven for wondering why central banks went unmentioned, despite being responsible for the creation of public money.

from Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty - otherwise a very serious, chunky economics textbook

The OBR is the UK's austerity machine. It was developed to placate the neoliberal IMF. It has no place in modern economic reality

Got gifted a subscription to @newint.bsky.social. What a birthday treat that @jasonhickel.bsky.social has contributed to the latest issue

Are we really going to drown in six inches of water? The central far right claim - that our problems are caused not by those with power and wealth but by utterly powerless people (asylum seekers etc) - is obviously and pathetically wrong. Yet millions, once more, are floundering in that puddle.

'Instead of an effective wealth tax, which would be ineffective, how about an ineffective wealth tax?' Important commentary from the IFS, as ever, on a #wealthtax

9/

"...global public wealth has actually fallen. Governments have less money to pay for climate adaptation, healthcare, education, sanitation or public transport. But it’s not that the money is not there" @thegreenfix.bsky.social

"As a tax adviser, I never thought that my key task on a given day recently would be to be looking up the meaning of 'exodus' in a dictionary" is a very funny quote. I hope it's all cleared up for him now?

Unfortunately, it's clear from the Treasuries' latest comment it really is considering rolling back new laws that stop the super rich using global banking to avoid paying the same inheritance tax as everyone else. 1/2 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

On this day in 1954, the United States orchestrated a coup against Jacobo Árbenz, the progressive and democratically-elected leader of Guatemala, because he sought to restore land to small farmers and Indigenous communities that had been dispossessed by US fruit companies.

The 'finance gap' for achieving global health/SDGs should be treated with the same suspicion in the global policy field as measuring your 'carbon footprint' is by environmentalists

To be a believer in Gates' mission, you have to believe that what his foundation does is additive to global health, rather than distortive

Faced with the notion that their side of the argument is completely indefensible, morally, ethically and politically, columnists are now shifting to the tried and tested position that the people they oppose are actually uncool, preachy and, if you think about it, actually embarrassing themselves.

The WHO's budget is "equivalent to just eight hours of global military expenditure". An almost unbelievable stat from yesterday's @devex.com newsletter

I loved this. A very passionate and knowledgeable speaker. Particularly enjoyed Hickel's exasperation with Labour's 'growth growth growth' mantra: He supports growth of certain sectors but what do they even mean! "growth of what!? For who!?"

World Bank head Ajay Banga's seemingly rehearsed final words in the opening Q and A at the Spring Meetings are a passionate love letter to the private sector and a challenge to other global actors, worth a watch www.youtube.com/live/gEWSQ9h...

Opinion The Stock Market Fetish www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/23/04/2...

Important to include examination of values when discussing nature's role beyond its 'economic' worth as well developed through dasgupta review, TEEB, UN SEEA (and by extension SDGs) and others. GAs report touches on this in its call for citizens assemblies

This is a cause close to my heart as an ex-English as a second language teacher and I'd love to add a couple points to this discussion. Reducing language barriers is absolutely a global health issue and glad to see it highlighted here

"Once hope fades—once people stop believing that hard work leads to progress—the system doesn’t bend. It breaks" A "pragmatic call" to action for the soon-to-suffer comfortable upper-middle classes open.substack.com/pub/akhilpur...

Wretched Columbia channel la Boethie's sycophants: "Such men must not only obey orders; they must anticipate his wishes; to satisfy him they must foresee his desires; they must wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his interest, and accept his pleasure as their own"

"...observing those men who painfully serve the tyrant in order to win some profit from his tyranny and from the subjection of the populace, I am often overcome with amazement at their wickedness and sometimes by pity for their folly."

"I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person ... People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite ..."

Opinion What Rough Beast – Trump and the Purge of America www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/19/03/2...

Cuts to public services aren't necessary. The government could raise £24 billion a year from a wealth tax on fortunes over £10m. Demand the Chancellor tax the super rich to avoid cuts. Sign our petition with @patmillsuk.bsky.social on @38degrees.bsky.social: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ta...

Jason Hickel now has a substack. One of those people who see the world one step ahead of the rest of us

8. Openly discuss what we face, talk through the means by which we might respond. Tap into our collective genius. Through neighbourhood networks, we should start building a resilient, deliberative, participatory democracy, to resolve at least the issues that can be fixed at the local level.