Jack

Strap yourselves in if you have a free half hour... The Grumpy Socialist Guide to the 7th Scottish Parliament MSPs. Are they all useless grifters? Are there any actual socialists? I went through all 129... Bit sweary/obnoxious. Enjoy. @jackmac82/the-grumpy-socialist-guide-to-the-7th-scottish-parliament-msps-a25e69c967d5" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@jackmac82/the…

@DarrenJohnson66 Nah, this is real cope. Labour used to get nearly a third of the vote in this constituency. They now have about a 10th of that. A historic collapse.

It's pretty common now for mainstream parties who are not deemed frontrunners to lose their deposit in by-elections. See also Tories and Lib Dems in Makerfield. It's not a sign of anything beyond not being a by-election frontrunner in a particular constituency.

@cranegirl1405 Which insult would that be? Rely on evidence, not your own biases

@JackMac_82 Clearly…. The debate suffers when it relies on insults, as it shows an inability to understand a valid point - I’ll end that there

Woke up feeling proud as fuck of Scotland. Reclaimed our streets from the fascists yesterday after their attempted pogrom. Then watched us win our first World Cup game for the first time since I was a wean. It’s not always shite being Scottish.

@ChrisCorney1 @TomLondon6 @AndyBurnhamGM Workers rights bill, rail nationalisation and VAT on private schools are all policies new Labour wouldn’t have pursued. And yes, it’s piecemeal, but it’s there via gb energy and steel. Point is not all right wing Labour projects are Blairite

@JackMac_82 @TomLondon6 @AndyBurnhamGM Industrial policy from Starmer? I havent seen. I also havent seen anything like a commitment to renationalisation from Burnham. what little he did say I dont trust. In New Lab Mk1 there was a right wing and a slightly less right wing (Brownites). It was all anti working class.

I hate and fear Reform and Restore and I very much hope @AndyBurnhamGM wins Makerfield However, if Burnham then becomes PM and is simply "Starmer with people skills" and simply tinkers with the status quo, then he will lay open the way for Farage & Lowe at next General Election

Mental health crises and social isolation among youth isn't just caused by horrible stuff online (although that doesn't help); it's caused by social isolation, underfunded public services, a lack of community spaces and by socio-economic factors that affect their own families.

While we're at it, let's fight for public, democratic ownership of digital infrastructure rather than allowing billionaires to dictate what algorithms serve to children.

Ceding ground on civil liberties to the far-right is a disastrous strategy. Socialists should oppose this ban because it just lets social media companies off the hook for exploiting exploitative, data-mining and addictive features. The fight should be to disable such features.

@paulmasonnews why is taking direct action to protest a genocide "extreme", Paul?

This is just - but we need a better solution. A German style security law placing behavioural red lines on extremist groups would be better than CT law to deal with this threat. We need to leave space for legitimate protest at all times, even if we find it uncomfortable 👇🏽

@cranegirl1405 who needs actual data when you've got your own anecdotal experience, eh? this isn't a serious discussion

@JackMac_82 Jack the evidence is I’ve seen it with my own eyes, Im old enough to remember when you didn’t even get benefits, I remember the YTS schemes that ran, I remember working in the fields through the holidays and estatic with the money I’d made which then encouraged me to work

@wasp14__88 @CraigHouston_ why do you care about folk's noses? weird flex

@CraigHouston_ She's a horrible grifting big nosed orc

😂

@cranegirl1405 There is zero evidence behind either of those statements. It's just rhetoric. 40% of benefits claimants are in work already. They are left with little choice but to claim because of long-term wage stagnation.

@JackMac_82 As you said we can agree to disagree but employing the amount of immigrants into jobs has allowed our own to become lazy and scrounge of benefits, we need to concentrate more on encouraging our own into work

@ChrisCorney1 @TomLondon6 @AndyBurnhamGM Neither Burnham nor Starmer have a positive progressive vision for this country. Burnham is peddling dead Labourism in a post-social democratic age; Starmer is peddling authoritarian liberalism. But Blairism was a different epoch that coincided with high rates of growth.

@ChrisCorney1 @TomLondon6 @AndyBurnhamGM I don't think it's helpful to suggest every project to our right is NL/Blairite. A project that involves public ownership of utilities is patently to the left of New Labour. Similarly, Starmer isn't a Blairite. Much more interested in industrial capacity etc. than the Blairites.

@FrankBefield @Mr_Balowski @SaulStaniforth it's not misinformation; it's objectively factual.

@Mr_Balowski @SaulStaniforth For correcting misinformation?

Lisa Nandy boasting that Starmer cut the aid budget to fund more 'defence' spending & confirms we need to increase spending even more to "meet this moment" The UK is already the 5th highest military spender in the world (only the US, China, Russia and Germany spend more than us)

@cranegirl1405 Every immigrant contributes, on average, thousands to our GDP every year -- collectively, they generate billions for our economy and make up 16% of the food & drink sector and 15% of the tourism workforce. If you want to damage that because of prejudice you're very short sighted

@JackMac_82 Nothing to do with radicilasation but everything to do with having a daughter off 22, and sensible enough to know that importing migrants onto our welfare system will not grow any economy

Everyone knows that defence procurement in Britain has been shambolic - and yet they want to pour billions more into this hole, and at the expense of the elderly, sick, disabled and poor 🤬

@cranegirl1405 Stopping immigration is a frankly insane policy that would destroy our economy, but it sounds like you've been radicalised by this hellsite so I see no merit in debating it further.

@JackMac_82 Yes I would stop it because of a few bad eggs, I would rather keep 850 people safe, these men aren’t seeking asylum. And if you’ve ever worked in the NHS then you would know that if the top tier heavy management was condensed and ran better nurses/doctors wouldn’t be off sick

@cranegirl1405 No - your figures are wrong. It's less than their per capita share. Scotland has low immigration. What's your solution: stop all immigration because of a few bad eggs? Ignore all their important contributions to our society? Our NHS would be in real trouble without them.

@JackMac_82 Ok so there’s roughly 8.5 thousand people in prison with roughly 10% being non uk residents, that’s 850 more Scottish people subjected to rape, violence or crime in anyway more than there has to be. And as immigration rises so will the numbers.

@cranegirl1405 correlation doesn't = causation. Scotland has extremely low immigration relative to most western European countries. White Scots make up 93% of the population but 94% of the prison population. It's simply false and dishonest to attribute rising crime to immigration.

@JackMac_82 What changed in Scotland around this time when numbers shot up? Immigration that’s what, I know full well we have our own born scumbags but we do not need anymore

@ChrisCorney1 @TomLondon6 @AndyBurnhamGM I'm no Burnham supporter, but he's clearly not "New Labour" anymore.

@TomLondon6 @AndyBurnhamGM Sorry Tom. You've got this completely wrong. The reason we have Reform in the first place is because New Labour goons like Burnham gave up on the working class. And now they are the solution to the problem they created?