Chris Hanlon SNP

Former member SNP Policy Development, Conference, and Member Conduct Committees.

Policy opinions all personal positions.

Members determine policy in the SNP.

[Chris Hanlon SNP @SovereignWill]

“elections can be deeply defective if they occur without the different sides getting an adequate opportunity to present their respective cases, or without the electorate enjoying the freedom to obtain news and to consider the views of the competing protagonists.”

Amartya Sen.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting owns all these local media stations and many others all across America. This is not journalism, it is scripted propaganda.

[Chris Hanlon SNP @SovereignWill]

@SimonForrest11 @DundeeSat Which would cost roughly £9M a year, also according to Perplexity...

[Chris Hanlon SNP @SovereignWill]

@SimonForrest11 @DundeeSat A quick look at the scoping application says SW were told they need 150l/s and SW think that's fine.

That's 13 Ml per day which is apparently, according to Perplexity, about right for a data centre of that size.

That's also enough for 40,000 homes...

[Dick Winchester 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @DickWinchester]

This is the sort of thing genuinely advanced countries do.

[Mariana Mazzucato @MazzucatoM]

On @SkyNews with @SophyRidge and @WilfredFrost yesterday morning to discuss my new book, The Common Good Economy: a new compass.
In a Common Good Economy, the how matters as much as the what. We are good at setting goals, but we are bad at achieving them. My new book introduces a compass to navigate that gap: five elements that hold everyone who claims to pursue the common good accountable.

[Ben Goldsmith @BenGoldsmith]

The European factory fishing industry and its political sponsors now accusing *birds* of causing the collapse of fish stocks says it all really.

This is what the conservation movement is up against.

‘European fishing nations call for cormorant cull’

https://t.co/OZHbJvNZ9D

[Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 🦣 @rahmstorf]

I often get asked: what impacts would a shutdown of the Atlantic ocean circulation #AMOC have? A short overview is found in this expert report. Impacts include e.g. widespread domestic food insecurity in Northern Europe and strain on global food systems.
https://t.co/Mir5KAYvXQ

[Chris Hanlon SNP @SovereignWill]

@MazzucatoM Very much appreciated that you did it yourself.

Academic texts read by someone that isn't the author are often painful to listen to, like the end of each sentence comes as a complete surprise to the reader.

Loved hearing "Cicero" in an authentic Italian accent...

[sarah @sahouraxo]

This is South Lebanon right now.

Israel is dropping bombs on civilian homes in Maarakah, Tyre.

American-made, American-supplied bombs.

The “ceasefire” is a lie.

[Chris Hanlon SNP @SovereignWill]

Only listened to a couple of chapters so far but I can already tell how important this framing of economics is going to be.

I really think one day soon Mariana will be viewed in the same light as Smith and Keynes.

[Mariana Mazzucato @MazzucatoM]

The Common Good Economy: A New Compass is out today! It draws together a decade of work--from The Entrepreneurial State to Mission Economy--and asks a different question: not just what the state can do, or how missions can be governed, but what principles have to be in place for any of that to deliver genuine transformation for people and planet. Links in replies.

[Believe in Scotland @believeinscot]

🇸🇪 Sweden celebrates its National Day on 6 June.
🌍 Here is what an independent Scotland can learn from Sweden: https://t.co/3krrbIrT3P

[Caolan @CaolanReports]

Lots of pro russian Irish people telling me to ‘go to the front lines & leave Ireland’

I’ve just come here from Nikopol. The press armour is still in my bag. I watched Russian drones hunt civilians with my own eyes. That’s why the indifference here is so despicable, especially while Ireland still supplies alumina to Russias war machine.

I’m not going anywhere. This investigation continues

[Chris Hanlon SNP @SovereignWill]

What could possibly go wrong here...?

[The National @ScotNational]

Palantir has been awarded a £9 million contract to manage the software behind licensing for firearms, explosives and poison in the UK https://t.co/QIHvNSxk6Y

[Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 @Mikiashvili_M]

According to @GYLA_CSO, in the span of 688 days, the Parliament of Georgia adopted 304 laws in an expedited manner.

The fastest descent into a dictatorship, maybe ever (excluding sudden junta revolutions).

[Despotic Inroad @DespoticInroad]

Again, an awful lot of gaslighting re: "neoliberalism", denying the existence of a ~50yr policy/governance agenda on the basis of "the state spends a lot of money".

Public spending as %-of-GDP isn't high because we've had a period of Leftwing hegemony. (Outside of the arts, the academy & the social/cultural policy sphere, that's obvious nonsense). Rather, it's high because:
👉Demographic pressures have pushed up the 2 massive spending outlays, health & pensions – a problem common to the vast majority of Western democracies
👉UK growth/productivity has been stagnant for ~18yrs, since The City of London collapsed under the weight of its own poor investments, while spending pressures have continued to grow apace
👉We have a growing (& expensive) debt pile as a result of the taxpayer twice being forced to bail out the private sector to the tune of several hundred £BN – 1st during GFC, 2nd during Covid lockdown
👉We have huge revenue pressures from "sticking plaster" subsidies covering up the underlying issue of chronic low investment, e.g. housing benefits ballooning while municipal capex on housebuilding shrinks; or tax credits/UC top-ups disguising stagnant real wages; or increasing day-to-day NHS spending after years of squeezed capital budgets/social care sector collapse

Neoliberalism is defined by privatisation, the embrace of globalisation/free trade, monetarist central banking, the emasculation of the labour movement, & the transformation of the state from a prime actor in national production/investment into a post-hoc fiscal distributor. It has been consciously driven by market-liberal true believers (some even self-identifying as "neoliberals") – on the Right by Hayekian/Friedmanite think tanks, business groups & various Conservative ideologues, and on the Left by Third Way modernisers (see Blair) and their intellectual forebears in Marxism Today's revisionism, the Democratic Left etc. etc.

Pretending none of this happened (because 'muh the state still spends £££') is pure sophistry. They want us to believe they didn't sell off airlines, steelmakers, coal mines, energy generators, water companies, car manufacturers, banks, bus/train contracts & millions of council houses. That they didn't deregulate financial services to get their 'Big Bang'. That they didn't abolish rent controls, or capital/exchange controls, or wage boards, or price commissions. That they didn't outsource core services and state capacity to corporate providers. That they didn't impose some of the most draconian/restrictive trade union laws in the democratic West. That they didn't cede monetary policy to an independent central bank, or cede trade/migration policy to an unelected, supranational, continental bureaucracy. That they didn't squeeze public investment or prioritise tax cuts over infrastructure spending. That they didn't eschew industrial policy and take a lax approach to deindustrialisation because the future was services & the "knowledge economy".

This isn't simpy an accumulation of random policy titbits, but is the outcome of a coherent intellectual project that has consistently rebalanced the labour/capital relationship in the latter's favour. These people are conning you.

[Richard Murphy @RichardJMurphy]

Out now: ‘What is Economics For? Rethinking a Discipline in Crisis’ https://t.co/EysMFuCmCH Reflecting on the work of 50 thinkers who have influenced me over the 50 years since I went to university to study economics, this eBook is both personal and a radical manifesto for change - and it's free.

[The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent]

⚡️ Update: All EU states back opening formal accession talks with Ukraine after Hungary deal.

All 27 EU member states have given the green light to open the first cluster of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said on June 4 after an agreement between Kyiv and Budapest cleared the key hurdle.
https://t.co/NAj2n7P67J

[Luath Press @LuathPress]

How can Scotland escape the current deadlock on independence?
Elliot Bulmer's portrayal of the current impasse in Scottish politics and the two views of the nature of the Union discussed in Burning the Union at Both Ends.

[Laurie Macfarlane @L__Macfarlane]

The UK has been a neoliberal economy that then spends enormous amounts trying to manage the social and economic harms it creates.

These two things are not incompatible.

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

I'll tell you what's 'unsustainable', and it's not state pensions, NHS funding or disability benefits. It's a society in which the majority works longer hours for lower wages so the 1% becomes richer still.

[Humza Yousaf @HumzaYousaf]

The Nowak family are a credit to this country

It speaks volumes to their character that, while grieving, they called for Henry's murder not to be used to cause division

Sick individuals, like Farage & Robinson, dishonour Henry's memory by using his murder to further their hate