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Welcome to WikiPolitiks
The Online Guide to British Politics
So far we have 2,822 articles
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Portals: Politics ♦ United Kingdom ♦ England ♦ Wales ♦ Scotland ♦ Northern Ireland ♦ Public Policy ♦ Influencers ♦ Fact Check ♦ All Portals |
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Monopoly is the DNA of unregulated capitalism. Since Thatcher and Reagan let neoliberalism loose, and the rest of the world followed suit, we have seen market sectors become ever more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Wherever one looks, giant corporations whose revenues are larger than most countries are dictating to govts worldwide. Getting regulation passed in the face of their lobbying power is a non-trivial task: one example we are living with is plastic pollution. We watch it happening, and do nothing. Another is neonicotinoids; it took 80% of our pollinators to die off before legislators reluctantly began to act.[1] What is lawful, and what is right... they're not always the same thing.
WikiPolitiks started life as a personal project to try to discover answers to these questions. Who really makes govt policy? Why is there such a lack of political will to regulate corporations? Who really owns Brand X? Why are govts worldwide colluding with Busine$$ against citizens to the point of destroying our planet? Why are our govts lying to us - they are very well aware of the devastating consequences of their (in)action. We know all this - and yet, we march to the polls every 5 years, and cast our ballot for more of the same. Why are we doing this to ourselves? What WikiPolitiks is not: we are not another Wikipedia clone. Our main remit is to try to answer questions by mapping timelines to political policies. For an example, see Immigration Policy, or the National Probation Service in England and Wales.
The project has grown to a point where we felt it contained enough information that others would also find it useful; hence the decision to publish it online. WikiPolitiks is a work in progress; we vastly under-estimated the amount of work, and the quantity of time, the project entails. We make no apologies for messy, half-done pages, but hope you find some useful and informative information.
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Planning on having a Family?Sperm counts have more than halved in the past 40 years, and are falling by around 1.4% a year.[2] The World Health Organisation also recognises the problem. History is full of lessons about the links between environmental degradation and the collapse of civilisations – the decline of the Roman Empire is linked with its increasing use of lead pipes. A technology that benefited millions also brought damage to the brain and nervous system, the stomach and the kidneys, as well as diseases such as high blood pressure. Sound familiar?[3] The billionaires who profit from pollution use their wealth to protect themselves from its consequences. They won't be inhaling or ingesting those toxins. Pollution can be outsourced far from their homes; they can live in New Zealand and pollute in Mexico, they can live in Hawaii and pollute in Indonesia.
Wilful Ignorance on our part. Thoughtless use of chemicals (cleaning, gardens); hedonistic use of transport (planes, cars); rampant consumerism (gadgets, clothing, stuff); self-indulgent breeding (number of kids). We have treated our planet like a bottomless rubbish dump, but that dog is well and truly dead. We cannot have our cake and eat it too.
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In The Stocks
Victoria Atkins MP, Drugs Minister, Opposes Drugs Regulation While Her Husband Grows 45 Acres Of Cannabis Under Govt Licence. The UK's New Princess Of Prohibition: Dishonesty, Hypocrisy, Corruption And Cruelty Behind A Pretty Face. There is no one who plumbs the depths of deception and hypocrisy as deeply as Drugs minister Victoria Atkins. Her recent performance in the Westminster Hall debate on Drug Consumption Rooms (DCRs) was riddled with inaccuracies, distorted information and downright falsehood about the success of such facilities throughout the world. She simply told brazen untruths in order to support her rejection of the clamour from other MPs to introduce DCRs because they are proven to save lives. Atkins would probably rather people didn't mention her husband's farm, because he has a 45-acre cannabis plantation. Pro-legalisation pressure group CLEAR revealed that Atkins is married to Paul Kenward, managing director of British Sugar. British Sugar is growing cannabis to supply to drugs company GW Pharmaceuticals. British Sugar's annual sales fluctuate with the sugar price, so when wholesale prices of the sweet stuff are low, times can be tough. Speaking about the long-term deal, Kenward said he was "confident of decent yields" and that "the return will be better than on tomatoes". Corruption? The legalisation of cannabis for medicinal use would scupper British Sugar's market. After all, we wouldn't want legalised cannabis to interfere with profits, now would we.
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