Alex Joseph

Events and Ops @WhitworthArt. Formerly @octagontheatre, @EmbsaySteam, @Holocaust_Hud, @The_Globe, @HRP_palaces and others. All views own. She/her.

[Thanos Angelopoulos @Th_Angelopoulos]

Three positions in the thread and in a RT. All asking the wrong question, imho.

The left-wing position on immigration isn't "for" or "against" it. It's about who controls the terms on which labour is bought and sold. Right now that's capital. Not workers, not unions, not the state.

@UnionJacked__ you're right that the liberal argument serves big corporations. But your framing assumes immigration itself suppresses wages. It doesn't. The variable is the regulatory framework: weak unions, no sectoral bargaining, tied visas that chain workers to a single employer, and zero enforcement of existing labour standards.

The UK "skills gap" is almost always a wage gap. A shortage of workers willing to accept the pay and conditions on offer. That's not an immigration problem. That's a collective bargaining problem. Every shortage occupation list is written by employers, for employers.

@xXMaddiMala is right that immigration sustains key sectors and that demographic pressures are real (https://t.co/T4yyXOd2M6). But the framing needs sharpening. "Immigration generates economic growth." Yes. GDP growth. Aggregate growth. Growth that accrues to asset owners, landlords, and shareholders while per-capita real wages stagnate.

When someone asks how this helps working-class people and the answer is "it grows the economy," that confirms exactly what they suspect: no distinction between the economy and working-class living standards. Liberals collapse these. The left shouldn't.

But here's the trap in the restrictionist position too. Cut immigration tomorrow without taxing accumulated wealth, without sectoral bargaining, without raising pay. You don't get higher wages. You get labour shortages in care, NHS, construction, hospitality. Services collapse. Tax revenues fall. Capital still doesn't pay.

The working class ends up paying twice. Worse public services because nobody is staffing them, and still no wage growth because the structural power imbalance between employer and worker hasn't changed. You've removed workers from the economy without touching the people who actually extract wealth from it.

Immigration restriction without wealth taxation and collective bargaining is austerity by another name. It shrinks the labour force, shrinks the tax base, and leaves the ownership class untouched. The landlord still collects. The shareholder still extracts. The worker still loses.

[Fake History Hunter @fakehistoryhunt]

I'm not sure what was decided at Stonehenge during the winter solstice this year, but I approve of the new god/ruler/emperor/pagan supreme being or whatever the rank is of the one that was chosen:

[Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la]

A live demonstration of how Zionists create antisemitism by associating our religion with Israeli crimes.

[Sassington, M.C. @MissSassbox]

hot take: we preferred to go out to the theaters until prices got super high. then safety issues popped up, plus a pandemic lockdown kept us away. once we were ready to go back to the movies, prices were so egregious that people couldn't go.

we stayed home, watched streaming and the more we watched, the higher the prices got there, too. now it just feels like we're being punished for trying to find reasonable entertainment while shareholders are scrambling to recover pandemic losses and find easy future profits.

greed is making it all complicated and it doesn't need to be.

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

Education is so broken that people celebrate people ignoring 2024 being the hottest year ever recorded, carbon dioxide levels higher than in millions of years and scientists warning of new diseases, financial collapse as sea levels rise and a threat to our ability to feed ourselves

[Alex Joseph @AJoseph012]

Really telling that these guys jump straight to the misogyny - if this amazing woman had done a Humanities PhD they'd also find any reason to attack the subject as 'useless' (not taking anything away from either discipline, just very clear diff from Ally Louks and no less bad)

[Dr Juliet Turner @juliet_turner6]

POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success

[Don McGowan @donmcgowan]

GB News funded media coup in full flow.

What this one doesn’t seem to understand is that if the BBC falls, around 30,000 people lose their jobs.

39 local radio stations and 13 regional news stations go dark.

The BBC website is always one of the most viewed sites on the planet. Gone.

These Paul Marshal-funded goons don’t have the tiniest shred of an idea what this would lead to.

It would genuinely weaken the United Kingdom as a whole.

But yeah, sure, Lee bring it down you chump.

[Michael Glasper @MichaelCGlasper]

It's the anniversary of the greatest diary entry in history.

Michael Palin, November 13th 1977.

[Paul Powlesland @paulpowlesland]

Leaving aside the nasty bullying attitude of these plastic patriots, what really annoys me with these videos is the way they quote the ‘law’ to intimidate polite & law abiding local residents whilst getting the legal position completely wrong. Although it’s hard to tell if they are lying deliberately about the law or just so stupid they can’t understand it.

So, here’s a quick primer:

Section 132 Highways Act 1990 potentially makes it a criminal offence to affix the flags on the lamppost in the first place. However, even if that is not the case, the idea that taking down a flag put up on the highway without permission is theft is absurd. The dishonesty element of theft is very unlikely to be fulfilled in such circumstances and, if you really want to cover yourself, you can avoid any ‘intention to permanently deprive’ by handing the flag(s) into the highway authority (usually the council), where those who put them up can collect them at their leisure. I’m sure these ‘patriots’ won’t mind giving their names, addresses and details of how many flags they have put up to the highways authority when they do so.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

NEW: The entire BBC news cycle is an abject lesson in the disaster economics of information.

This isn’t just a news story. It’s a teachable example of real-time information collapse. We can’t fix that but we can & must save the BBC.
1/

[Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates]

So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated , uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the “most wealthy person in the world.”

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Krishnan Guru-Murthy, "Why is the sale of ITV worrying for public service broadcasting?"

Dorothy Byrne, "It's deeply concerning when our main commercial news provider in the UK looks like its going to be taken over by a massive US company"

"We will now have the situation where ITV News is going to be owned by Comcast. They already own Sky"

"Paramount Skydance own Channel 5"

"And we mustn't forget that ITV owns 40% of ITN which makes Channel 4 News, this program"

"We can't just say it's inevitable that the big global US players take us over"

"We should be controlling the narrative about our country from our own country"

"We have seen this big American TV players come under a lot of pressure from Donald Trump, and that's a particular worry"

"MPs should be moving to make sure there are strong controls in place to protect our political democracy"

"Channel 4 News is something very very special in our society

[Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙 @JujuliaGrace]

Your quick reminder that the reason the NHS is in this state is specifically because of what politicians have done. The NHS isn’t useless. The model isn’t defunct. Politicians have actively under-resourced our public healthcare system. It’s a travesty. 🚨
https://t.co/ItnBvvyykF

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

Please look at the 'ordinariness' of this. This is not going on in some cellar in the midst of a battle. This man is a minister in a democratically elected govt, in a country that is our ally. Is there no international concern at what's going on here?

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Why are the Western media not reporting these daily stories of injustice, apartheid and ethnic cleansing from the West Bank? In what world can we treat the country that does this to the Palestinians it occupies and subjugates as a democratic ally? How are our politicians allowed to form lobby groups supporting the government that does this? And why do we allow them accept campaign money from the war criminals that perpetrate these daily crimes?

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

‘One of the oldest urban centres on the planet’: Gaza’s rich history in ruins.

My @guardian piece on the erasure of Gaza's past. As we mourn incalculable human losses, learning about its past can help us better understand the present

https://t.co/Hrsx3klOkz

[Miguel Delaney @MiguelDelaney]

A very pointed final line in a statement from the UK Football Policing Unit on the Maccabi story

“if the government want a role in regulating football events that could be termed ‘events of national significance’, then they need to bring forward legislation”

[Miffy @miffythegamer]

For fuck’s sake guys, go and do free DIY repairs for your elderly neighbours, pick some litter, fund raise for a food bank, put a swap shelf at the end of your road, join a friends of your park group. Put your effort into something useful.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

New from @EmpirePodUK
THE LOST WORLD OF OTTOMAN GAZA
With the great Eugene Rogan, Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford

[Frank Cottrell-Boyce @frankcottrell_b]

One of the ways an arts education works:
Katherine reads John Donne's least accessible poem. Gets an idea. A few years later a thousand highly skilled people are working on the movie. Thousands more are involved in its distribution ... and on and on.