These are energy bills many Britons simply can’t afford. Some will pay with their lives

JVL Introduction

Many people we know cancelled their subscriptions to The Guardian over its appalling hostility to Jeremy Corbyn and its buying into and amplification of the antisemitism moral panic.

But having plumbed the depths, it now seems to be getting some things right.

Aditya Chakrabortty is in fine form, lambasting the government, or rather absence of government, as well as the failure of the media to hold anyone to account:

“Whether in politics, policy or the media, those at the top, nourished on platitudes and drunk on careerism, just cannot handle what stares us in the face…”

“This is a country ruled by groupthink, when the group in question is a bunch of well-raised and nicely suited mediocrities. Organisations mired in groupthink eventually fail, and so it is with the UK. We have a market unable to deliver an essential commodity at a price that people can afford, which is therefore broken. We have a rail network that is effectively carrion feasted on by financial vultures and foreign states. And we have a water industry that is quite literally a shitshow. All of this has been clear for years, as indeed has the cost of living crisis, steadily growing during the past decade of stagnant wages.”

And after touching on the utter hopelessness of Starmer’s Labour, Chakrabortty contrasts it with the launch meeting of Enough is Enough and Mick Lynch, catching the public mood.

It is organisations like EiE and Don’t Pay, as well as trade unions and civil society organisations, that are setting the terms of the debate on this crisis.

Not before time!

This article was originally published by the Guardian on Fri 26 Aug 2022. Read the original here.