Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
Prediction... Burnham will call an early general election this week.
He's a populist, and he knows the political opportunity in front of him.
Reform are in retreat, the Tories haven't yet recovered, and the Greens are caught up in false accusations of antisemitism from Burnham and the Board of Deputies.
But there's something much bigger at play here.
Burnham is selling the promise of change while his government continues to defend so much of the political and economic establishment that desperately needs changing.
Just look at the last week. Jackdaw approved, the antisemitism in schools report endorsed, and now a few encouraging words about Europe have people falling over themselves to praise him.
It's political theatre, and it's working.
But the longer he governs, the harder it becomes to maintain the impression that change is already here all we've heard so far is talk.
So why not cash in on the honeymoon, and play the oldest trick in politics.
Sell the promise of change, secure the power to deliver it, then spend the next five years explaining why meaningful change isn't possible.
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
I've been revisiting @UKLabour's 2024 manifesto, and some of the commitments are extraordinary given where we are today...
- Defend the international rule of law.
- Uphold international law in Gaza.
- Recognise Palestinian statehood as an inalienable right.
- Reject new oil and gas exploration because it worsens the climate crisis.
These weren't demands from protesters.
THEY WERE LABOUR'S OWN PROMISES!
The government shouldn't need reminding what the principles are. It already wrote them down and commited to them!
The question is why those principles become negotiable the moment defending them carries a political cost.
@andyburnham @ZackPolanski
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
Vote Lula if you want Healthcare, Pensions, Wages and want a Brazilian to be President.
Vote Bolsonaro if you hate all those things, love criminals and want Brazil to be Trump and Netanyahu's bitch/
#LulaNaPaulista #LulaEmCopacabana #ComLulaNaRua
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
If, by the end of this decade, we haven't stamped out this horrendous racism, weaponised as a fascist tactic to convince society that immigrants are the problem, rather than those exploiting division to entrench their own power, wealth and that of their donors, at the expense of ordinary people, our environment and society itself, then I genuinely fear we'll have passed the point of no return.
And this isn't just about Trump or America.
It's happening across Europe, and right here in the UK, where the same politics of fear, scapegoating and division are increasingly being normalised.
The greatest danger isn't simply the racism itself. It's what that racism is being used to distract us from, and what those exploiting it are getting away with while we're distracted.
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
Yes tax billionaires- but not because we need their money, but because we don’t want them to have it.
O’Brien is plain wrong - the government fund and create markets - not taxes.
Where do @TaxJusticeUK think tax payers get the money to pay taxes?
#MMT
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
🚨 PLEASE SHARE!
I've written to both my children's schools following the Government's antisemitism review.
I WILL NOT accept genocide being presented as a two-sided political debate, or Palestinian history and suffering being erased from their education.
I've drafted a template which I'm sharing for other parents to use or adapt.
Political impartiality must NEVER become historical dishonesty.
Please use them. Challenge your schools. Demand answers.
#GazaGenocide
docs.google.com/document/d/1…
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
The £3 trillion @griffitha refers to, is of course the net savings in the UK economy parked with the Treasury to earn £120 billion a year interest. When the MP talks of cutting the deficit, he doesn’t mean the £130 billion paid to banks, he means welfare.
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
If capitalism is so great, why do corporations need tax breaks, subsidies, exemptions, grants, bailouts, legal protections, and trade barriers to survive? And when ordinary people ask for help, why is it suddenly called socialism?
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
“…like a shopkeeper cashing up at closing time and starting again at zero the following morning – except… the government doesn’t start the day with a cash float but with access to an approved line of credit from the Bank of England.”
frapacioli.substack.com/p/wh…
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
That's the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.
Allow me to summarise what I've been saying in one post and explain what's going on here. We need a clean energy system, our water systems, schools and hospitals are struggling, roads are crumbling and we're facing serious welfare cuts. We're told that we can't use public investment - unless it's on the military, of course - to fix all this because it'll "cause inflation" and "increase borrowing costs". Two huge lies - in fact the principal cause of inflation is rising energy costs and currency-issuing governments with central banks don't need to borrow money from parasitic 'bond markets'. Debt trouble occurs when nations with weak currencies - such as Argentina - owe debts payable only in a foreign currency, i.e. $ US. We are not in that situation.
Government bonds (called 'gilts' in the UK) are savings accounts giving big capital free money, nothing more - they don't fund our public spending. They're a relic from the age when the gold exchange system limited the money supply - this was abandoned between 1971 and 1978 when governments worldwide adopted fiat money systems. Just because bond traders jack up yields in the secondary market doesn't mean that governments need to increase yields in the primary auction. The problem is, as @JLMelenchon has just told the French, supine bought-off politicians and central bankers conforming to fiscal spending rules imposed on us by global money markets - the 'bond vigilantes'.
We're told that we should limit public spending because governments are wasteful and don't allocate capital properly - in other words utilities, schools, hospitals, infrastructure maintenance and other goods and services we really need don't make huge profits. Private investors allocate capital more efficiently and ensure progress - huge lie #3. Look below - private investors are wasting $ trillions on a huge AI bubble that'll inevitably burst. Tulip mania revisited. The 'animal spirits' of greedy, excitable private investors never learn.
But, to keep us in the dark, the investment elite - the wealthy corporations, banks and individuals who live off the free money we pay them as 'interest', 'yields' and 'returns' - won't let us see it burst. In the quite likely event that Western governments initially refuse to bail out the $4.2 trillion - yes, trillion - AI shortfall, there are contractual IPO (Initial Public Offering) mandates for compulsory 'public offerings' to fall back on. To cut a long story short, stupid pension, insurance fund, hedge fund, private equity and sovereign wealth fund managers, when they were told AI would be a bonanza, signed contracts to fund any bailout needed after 2030 and keep the AI shitshow on the road. We'll be paying for the system that steals our data, spies on us, give us the wrong answers to questions on ChatGPT, churns out cheat essays for students, ruins human creativity, and makes a mess of our NHS accounts etc. for the foreseeable future.
In other words, the geniuses who look after our savings and pensions are contracted to flush them down the toilet. But there's more. These private investment grifters do this thing called 'leveraging' - in other words, they use your savings and insurance premiums as derisking collateral to borrow loads more investment money at cheap preferential rate from their pals in the commercial banks. When the bubble bursts and threatens commercial bank liquidity, the central banks, like they did in 2008, will issue loads of public money as QE (Quantitative Easing). Yes indeed, the same public money we're told causes inflation and inefficiency when spent on utilities, hospitals, schools etc. will be shoved in the commercial banks' reserve accounts. Then the bond market will jack up yields, the governments and central bankers will conform and we'll pay them more interest for doing absolutely nothing constructive.
While all this is going on, China is still growing on the back of huge injections of public investment at 5% per annum with 1% inflation. This 300 year old loan-shark racket we call 'the market economy' in the West is finished. Melenchon is right.
I really tried to warn everybody. Five years ago, it was obvious Putin was going to invade Ukraine, and it was obvious who his allies were. But few wanted to believe it.
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
1) An emergency brake on rents - rising by the LOWEST of CPI inflation, wage growth, or 2%.
2) A commitment to protecting social security - not pitting people on benefits against spending on weapons.
3) A green energy revolution now - cutting bills for everyone, forever.
In the run up to the Budget on 28 October the media will tell you which cuts “must” be made. Here’s the list they won’t read out. Corporate welfare.
- The banks have already pocketed £6bn from the Tory surcharge cut. Labour still hasn’t reversed it.
- The Treasury also pays the banks interest on their QE reserves at the Bank of England. IPPR puts that at £22bn a year.
- Oil and gas firms get back tax they’ve already paid when they decommission rigs. HMRC’s own estimate: £24bn.
That bank reserves payment alone is more than the entire police budget for England and Wales (£21bn), and over 80% of what councils in England spend on adult social care (£26.7bn).
There’s always money. Now ask yourself why these numbers never make the media’s list of “tough choices”.
Steve Davies #BackZack retweeted
I genuinely believe we're living through one of the most consequential periods in modern history.
Not simply because of the crises unfolding around us, but because the very systems designed to prevent them are being systematically dismantled.
International law is being undermined. Institutions established to uphold peace and justice are being attacked. Democracy is subordinated to wealth and corporate power. Human rights are becoming conditional on political convenience. And the climate crisis continues to accelerate while those responsible protect the status quo.
These aren't isolated failures. They're symptoms of a system in which power has become increasingly concentrated, accountability increasingly absent, and the consequences increasingly catastrophic.
But what I refuse is to simply accept that any of this is inevitable.
We have the knowledge, resources, technology and collective capacity to build a fundamentally better world. What we lack isn't the means. It's a system that puts humanity and the planet ahead of wealth and power.
That won't change simply by replacing one set of political leaders with another. We need to change the direction of the system itself.
From extraction to regeneration. From concentrated power to a collective voice. From endless crisis management to actually building a better tomorrow.
The greatest danger isn't simply where the world is heading, it's that we're being conditioned to believe there's no alternative.
There is, and there are billions of us capable of building it.




















