George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) on X (original) (raw)

The bride at every funeral, the corpse at every wedding. This account is now closed. Find me on Bluesky: georgemonbiot.bsky.social

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  30°C above normal in the Arctic today. 40°C above normal in the Antarctic today. It would be unbelievable if it were not true. And it is terrifying beyond words. The war we have waged against the natural world has, in climatic terms, just gone nuclear.
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  She was groomed by dark-money lobby groups working for Big Tobacco, Big Oil and foreign oligarchs. Now Liz Truss is in office and trashing this country on their behalf.
  
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  Tiktok has been banned in the US on the grounds that China could use it "to manipulate and control Americans by spreading propaganda and misinformation." In other words, China *might do* exactly what Elon Musk *has done* with X. It's a blatant double standard.
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  Sorry to repeat myself, but you *really* need to know this. Under the government's Public Order Bill, anyone who has protested in the previous 5 years can be forced to "submit to ... being fitted with, or the installation of, any necessary apparatus" to monitor your movements.
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  A simultaneous 30°C anomaly in the Arctic and 40°C anomaly in the Antarctic, among the most terrifying events scientists have recorded, was a footnote in the bulletins. One celeb slapping another: headlines everywhere. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a bant.
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  We should never underestimate the extent to which the BBC changed this country by giving endless airtime to Nigel Farage, other far right extremists and the Tufton Street junktanks, while shutting out progressive voices. 🧵
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  A source at the
  @metpoliceuk
  says the reason why junior Downing Street staff got fined, while senior figures didn't is that the senior people failed to answer the questionnaire. So non-cooperation gets you off. I'll remember that next time I'm arrested for protesting.
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  If you are middle class, they call you a champagne socialist If you are working class, they say it's the politics of envy If you wear leather shoes, they call you a hypocrite If you don't, they call you a hippy. Everyone, apparently, is disqualified from challenging the system.
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  Next month, the Conservatives will have been in office for 12 years. I can think of dozens of ways in which they have made life in this country worse. I cannot think of one way in which they have made life in this country better.
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  Toby Young was admitted to Oxford University despite failing to make the required grades, after his father, Lord Young, made a discreet phone call to a well-placed friend. You were saying something about privileged children, Toby?
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  To my friends in the media: This is a time of high drama, I agree. But while you gossip endlesly about who's in and who's out, you have almost entirely ignored the Public Order Bill that was passed in the Commons this week: the most draconian legislation of the modern era.
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  Everything wrong with our politics, in one story: Hedge fund manager buys large estate on Dartmoor. Uses vast fortune to challenge the right to camp there. Wins. Local people call on their MP to amend the legislation. Discover he's been funded by the hedge fund manager.
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  I'm on my way home from #COP26, full of frustration and fury after reading the draft declaration. The world's powerful governments propose to do more to defend the fossil fuel industry than to defend life on Earth.
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  There was no Conservative Party on my ballot paper today. Instead there was something called Local Conservatives. They're so desperate to distance themselves from Boris Johnson that they've gone and changed the name of the party.