If you want to know what happens to populations living in austerity who trade with the US on WTO terms, take a look at Tonga. THREAD

I visited Tonga in 1981 and it was, like so many other Pacific Island nations, slowly adjusting to Westernisation. The people ate mostly fish and vegetables. /1
Now it has rates of Type 2 diabetes of up to 40%, life expectancy has fallen by 10 years and well over half the population is obese. So what happened? (stats https://t.co/1XQHdqL8o8) /2
What happened was that the US discovered that Tonga was a great dumping ground for a cheap and locally unsaleable product known as a Turkey 'tail', essentially a gland of 40-45% fat. /3
They were fatty and, because cheap, attractive to a poor population. By 2007, in another Pacific Island nation, Samoa, 20 kilos per person were being sold every year. But it banned them for public health reasons. https://t.co/2f1N8tuMp6 /4
Something similar happened with another poor quality fatty meat product, 'Mutton flaps', which were sold by New Zealand to the Pacific Islands but (on some accounts) banned in New Zealand. /5 https://t.co/onvCgJ9YX6
Samoa banned the import of Turkey 'tails' and 'Mutton flaps' in 2007 to improve public health. But problems were afoot. To become a trading nation it needed to accede to the WTO. /6
And the WTO insisted that a price of accession was Samoa dropping its bans, to the benefit of American turkey farmers and New Zealand sheep farmers, but the detriment of the local population. https://t.co/M8Rznfpjhq /7
As the World Health Organisation drily observed "The removal of the ban illustrated the potential for international trade agreements to stifle innovation in nutrition policy-making through constraining policy space." https://t.co/AkQBt4uiBH /8
The moral of the story is simple. If you feel in your bones that no good will come of the Government kneeling to the US organisations who fund the IEA's 'research' into a liberalized trade policy, you are right. /9
If you feel in your bones that it is not for the good of the people of the UK that US trade bodies are paying for the policies pushed by Liam Fox and his libertarian pals, you are right. /10
If you feel in your bones that a world of chlorinated chicken and hormone injected beef - and Turkey tails - is not going to be good for the people of the UK, you are right. /11
And if you wonder about, and you fear, the world those greedy bastards have in store for the vulnerable in this country, forced to get by on an unliveable minimum wage, zero hours contracts and slashed social security, you have me for company. /ENDS

More from Jo Maugham QC

So, just before Christmas, Government what it called a "response" to this New York Times account of cronyism in pandemic spending.

And I said, when that "response" - which you can read here
https://t.co/gLEJzuqoAx - was published that every single notional rebuttal by Government of a claim made by the New York Times was false, misleading or both.

And it's time for me to make good.

Here's the first "rebuttal" by Government to the New York Times' claim that: "The government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive V.I.P. lane."


A number of points might be made.

(1) Government cannot say the NYT got it wrong. (2) the NAO found the VIP lane (later renamed the high-priority lane) "sat alongside" the normal lane. And I have shown elsewhere VIP contracts were handled by different teams all the way through.


(3) Although Govt says "offers of support raised by Opposition MPs were dealt with expeditiously" the NAO report does not record any referrals made by an Opposition MP leading to a contract - and the Government response telling does not say any did.
We need to talk about the 'expert' witness statement evidence led by Ms Bell in her successful case before the Tavistock. THREAD

You can see who gave evidence in her support from these extracts from the Tavistock's Skeleton Argument.


Helpful for you to bear in mind that her solicitor was a man called Paul Conrathe, who has a long association with the religious right in the US (I have talked about him a number of times but this is as good a starting point as any).


I am not going to address here other criticisms that might be made of the form in which that evidence was given or the timing of its service before the court. I am just going to address, in alphabetical order, the individuals whose evidence Mr Conrathe led on Ms Bell's behalf.

The first witness, alphabetically, was Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford, Michael Biggs.

Mr Biggs was exposed for posting transphobic statements online under a fake twitter handle: @MrHenryWimbush according to this report.

More from All

Master Thread of all my threads!

Hello!! 👋

• I have curated some of the best tweets from the best traders we know of.

• Making one master thread and will keep posting all my threads under this.

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1. 7 FREE OPTION TRADING COURSES FOR


2. THE ABSOLUTE BEST 15 SCANNERS EXPERTS ARE USING

Got these scanners from the following accounts:

1. @Pathik_Trader
2. @sanjufunda
3. @sanstocktrader
4. @SouravSenguptaI
5. @Rishikesh_ADX


3. 12 TRADING SETUPS which experts are using.

These setups I found from the following 4 accounts:

1. @Pathik_Trader
2. @sourabhsiso19
3. @ITRADE191
4.


4. Curated tweets on HOW TO SELL STRADDLES.

Everything covered in this thread.
1. Management
2. How to initiate
3. When to exit straddles
4. Examples
5. Videos on

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