max blunt

Anti war, anti genocide, anti corporate. #PTSD

[max blunt @maxblunt]

Sir Ian Mckellen delivers a 400 year old Shakespeare pro immigrant monologue. It will probably fly over reform heads though..

https://t.co/4sVeZDPPtY via @YouTube

[Campaign Against Arms Trade @CAATuk]

UK military spending has reached a 30-year high.

This shameful prioritisation of warfare at the expense of welfare is a danger to us all.

[Mark Curtis @markcurtis30]

Just a reminder that in the UK, Palestine Action is a proscribed terrorist organisation and the IDF is not.

[Ashok Kumar @comrade_kumar_]

This is contemptible. Shame on her.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

New Labour is rushing its new National Security State Threats bill through parliament in just one day.

It will be illegal to publish TRUE casualty information from Iran, from Hamas run hospitals in Gaza, or IDF assault details from the resistance in Lebanon.

14 years in jail.

[Nick Dearden @nickdearden75]

MPs criticising the US-UK Pharma Deal in the Commons this afternoon. This deal is a democratic scandal.

@LaylaMoran up first saying the government has agreed to divert “an eye watering amount of NHS money to very large American corporations without a vote”

[EuropeanPowell @EuropeanPowell]

⚠️UK people, wake up!

Did you know it's highly likely you and your family live in a deregulated Special Economic Zone?
There are 91 of these zones, and counting, in the UK.
What Is A Special Economic Zone (SEZ)?
An SEZ is a geographically designated area where normal planning rules, corporate tax arrangements, and regulatory oversight are loosened to attract private investment.
The pitch is always: jobs, growth, levelling up.
Heard this before?
What actually happens: public money, aka State aid, removes the risk and friction for corporations and dumps it on the public sector.
Land values rise.
Private capital captures the gain.
Democratic accountability is bypassed because decisions are made by zone boards, development corporations, and mayoral offices rather than elected councils.
Secondary legislation on zone policy bypassed Parliamentary debate, public consultation, and notification of the press.
This is why you have not heard of free zones.
Both the Tories and Labour colluded on the nationwide rollout of free zones immediately after Brexit. While out of office, Labour publicly said free zones were not a silver bullet for the economy, but mayors like Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram signed off with the Tories on setting them up anyway.
Zone ideology is the resurrection of Thatcher's free zone policy, which delivered hugely underwhelming results, partly because EU state aid rules limited how far the model could go.
Brexit rewrote those rules, opening the door to the scale of corporate subsidy now flowing through free zones to major asset managers and private capital.
The books below on free zones are few and far between. They all examine the history and contemporary application of free zone ideology.

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

👉 NEW — Israel spent £50,000 lobbying Reform

By @daniaakkad

… Before deputy leader Richard Tice told MPs not to talk about Israeli influence

https://t.co/GS4gOabc5L

[Fonsi Loaiza @FonsiLoaiza]

La alcaldesa comunista Elke Kahr ha barrido en las elecciones municipales en Graz, Austria. Sus medidas: viviendas sociales y prohibir privatizar el suelo. Dona el 75% de su sueldo. "La izquierda ha fracasado porque sus dirigentes no lo aplican en sus propias vidas", manifiesta.

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

Lloyds debanks The Canary with no explanation and are currently withholding their funds.

This sets a very dangerous precedent and attack on Independent media.

Journalism is NOT a crime

[max blunt @maxblunt]

@Helen_Whately Never mind the corporate welfare bill, because they are your masters…

[mostro ✊🏼  🇵🇸 @avantibionda]

Adoro questa donna coraggiosa e giusta
“IDF mi spedisce foto di armi dicendo che mi massacreranno, ma sarò chiara: io non ho paura di voi, come altri codardi nei media americani…
Voi siete odiati in tutto il mondo, e non perché siete ebrei,ma perché massacrate persone innocenti.

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

Palantir, the US spytech firm accused of abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, enjoys lavish tax breaks on UK profits that are already derived from taxpayers’ money, an analysis by openDemocracy has found.

The company has been awarded at least £670m in UK public contracts in recent years. That includes a £330m deal to manage sensitive NHS data, signed despite the fact Palantir's co-founder Peter Thiel has expressed disdain for publicly funded healthcare.

Those contracts have helped make the UK Palantir’s second-largest market by revenue, with 2024 pre-tax profits of £25.3m.

But its effective UK tax rate that year was only £2m, or 8%, far lower than the norm of 25% paid by firms with profits above £250,000. In 2023 it was even less, at 4.7%, and in 2022 it was 4.2%.

For 2025, Companies House filings suggest Palantir paid less than £820,000 in cash tax in the UK, less than it paid in Korea, Japan, France and Germany.

The low rate was due a structured arrangement that limits the amount of profits recognised in the UK, as well as a rule that awards large tax breaks to firms that compensate their employees with stock instead of cash, openDemocracy reported.

The report said the nature of filings made it difficult to assess the total amount of tax breaks Palantir has received, but by 2022 alone it had accumulated £230m in tax relief from what it called “employee share acquisition relief”.

“When profitable companies are paying very little tax, especially when much of their revenues derive from taxpayers' money itself, then it's important to ask why,” Mike Lewis, director of TaxWatch, told openDemocracy.

“Is it because tax incentives and tax breaks are poorly targeted? Or is it because companies are shifting profits in ways that our tax system is supposed to counteract?”

[Sarah Wilkinson @swilkinsonbc]

A joint investigation finds German conglomerate Bayer is behind the liberal israeli use of glyphosate and white phosphorus inside Lebanon https://t.co/BFNw1sHeBr

[Mark Curtis @markcurtis30]

Friend of Israel Andy Burnham has attended armed forces day, appointed a pro-corporate chief of staff and endeared himself to the Guardian, now he just needs to pledge his faith in nuclear weapons and the royals, and we’re all set for another round of oligarchy. 🇬🇧

[max blunt @maxblunt]

@SangitaMyska Blocked that freak a long time ago, look who he ‘writes’ for…

[The Heartlands Tribune @Labourheartland]

George Carlin called it years ago.

You do not need a grand conspiracy when interests converge.

The same people go to the same schools, sit on the same boards, drink in the same rooms, fund the same politics and protect the same system. They do not need to meet in secret to know what is good for them.

That was America’s great export. Not democracy.

Managed choice.

The illusion that the public are choosing, while the real options have already been narrowed by the people who own the table.

And now look at Britain.

A Labour Party with more than 400 MPs apparently cannot find one person on its own benches fit to lead the country. So the machine looks outside Parliament, clears a path through Makerfield, imports Andy Burnham, and the media starts talking as though the job is already his.

We are told this is normal. It is not normal.

It is a rigged system dressed in constitutional language. A coronation made to look like process. A rescue operation for the Labour Party sold as a reset for the country.

Carlin understood the trick.

They give you a choice, but only after they have decided what choices are allowed.

And if Burnham walks into Downing Street on the back of one manufactured by-election and a Westminster nod, then let’s stop pretending this is democratic renewal.

It is the illusion of choice. Made in America. Perfected in Westminster... they're not even trying to conceal it now...

#AndyBurnham

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

The man who recruited Keir Starmer to the Bar and became one of his earliest legal mentors

Has criticised Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and Shabana Mahmood over the expansion of terrorism law

Arguing that protesters are being punished as "terrorists" for criminal damage despite terrorism never being charged, put to a jury, or proven

Any plans to to fix this @andyburnham ?

[Cat Hobbs @CatHobbs]

"Greater public control of essential public services"

NO NO NO - this simply *means* MORE REGULATION

Burnham can take back water and energy companies WITHOUT COMPENSATING SHAREHOLDERS by forcing them to deliver on their duties, which⬇️ profitability, then special administration

[max blunt @maxblunt]

@jfw__69 @King0243_PJC Get an argument

[max blunt @maxblunt]

@andyburnham Your preference is Blackrock doing it for you..