George Monbiot posted this on Twitter this morning:
In November, I wrote a column estimating how much it would cost to restore public services. Answer: v roughly £100bn a year: https://t.co/B0Nreqv6gg Where would it come from? @RichardJMurphy has the answers in this essential article. https://t.co/Pno9pspbPB. Read them together.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) April 11, 2024
It looks as though George and I are two sides of the same hymn sheet.
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The next step is to get on Channel 4, Sky and the BBC.
The Lineker affair showed that many of the BBC journalists are not in step with the Governors.
I see indications that in their reporting of Gaza. They don’t condemn what they might if the same things were done by Russia or pass judgement, but the selection of examples they film, make the point.
I suspect though I have no insider knowledge, that many would like to present the viewer with views they don’t normally see.
It almost does not matter what the figure is – there is no exact answer. Monbiot is probably roughly right. What matters is that the trivial amounts that Reeves is talking about are an order of magnitude smaller than what is required. Reeves and co seem incapable of thinking on the scale needed. The contrast with what Biden is doing in the US is stark.
They are not ‘incapable’ they consciously seem to have decided not to acknowledge the scale of whats needed until after the election (and maybe not even then?
The point about the “trivial amounts that Reeves is talking about” is that they will be seen by some as “not rocking the boat too much”. This is part of LINO’s “safe pair of hands/steady as she goes” narrative. Good grief – think of the shit-storm if Reeves had proposed the sort of amounts that Richard/George are talking about.
One needs to see these things in the round. What she says is performative – like Max Bygraves “I wanna tell you a story”… & with the same connective to reality/needs – the difference is that at the end of the Reeves story – you won’t be laughing.
The problem is, do we believe Labour is lying to get into power? I see the need to avoid rocking the boat, but the evidence is that Labour is going much further than it needs to in order not to rock the boat. When Wes Streeting talks about further private involvement in healthcare to tackle the backlog, I fear we should believe him (and it’s such a dumb idea it can only be idealogical—we’re talking about the same staff, largely, so where’s the extra effort going to come from?) So, my conclusion is, the Labour front bench actually mean what they’re saying. Frankly, neither option gives me much hope.