Graham Scambler
@GrahamScambler
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Sociologist. Emeritus Prof, UCL; theory, politics, health, sport, jazz, art; atheist, republican, socialist. Own views. Mastodon @[email protected]
Joined June 2012
People can’t feed their kids, heat their homes, see a GP or a dentist, or even protest without being criminalised, while the super-rich avoid tax & buy more homes & yachts. What kind of society? And why are we not exercising our collective power to bring this nonsense to an end?.
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Britain celebrates protests in China even as it outlaws them in Britain!.
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So Labour’s share of the vote down on that what they achieved under Corbyn in 2018. Bet you don’t hear that said out loud very often.
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There’s a rumour circulating that Labour MPs are supposed to represent their constituents, not Israeli lobbyists. Is this true?.
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Please RT in solidarity with @jeremycorbyn and against the organised campaign to oust him as Labour leader by smearing him as a terrorist sympathiser and/or racist. This kind of ‘dirty politics’ is farcical, sick and unacceptable whatever people’s personal political leanings.
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Lets make it very clear. The pro-Israeli lobby and the anti-Corbyn lobby within the Labour Party are weaponising antisemitism to try and prevent a pro-Palestinian, socialist becoming PM. And no, I’m not an antisemite. Got it now? #JC4PM.
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We need a full investigation of the extent to which Israeli money and influence is shaping UK party politics. And NO this is NOT an antisemitic trope! Keep your nerve people.
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Galloway has had a greater impact in the post-Corbyn era than all of Labour’s socialist MPs put together. There’s a lesson there.
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I despise Keir Starmer as a leader and a person.
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We seem now to be in the absurd situation where you can say anything you like about any country and its policies with the exception of Israel! Don’t go along with this dangerous nonsense. Israel is an apartheid state currently committing war crimes in Gaza. RT if you agree.
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If you’re ever tempted to think highly of any of the Tory leadership candidates, just check their voting records. They are all of them 100% committed to the privileged, prosperous ‘few’.
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Biological ‘discourse’ may be socially constructed, but biological ‘mechanisms’ are real. If one holds that sex is socially constructed, why not age and the separation of species? What’s to stop me announcing that tomorrow I will be a three-year old giraffe? #epistemicfallacy.
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#COVID (1) health is not always a person’s top priority, (2) this is probably most true of people who are materially/socially desperate, (3) ‘sticks’ in the form of police fines are unlikely to be effective, and (4) shaming & blaming the public is poor public health practice.
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Has there ever been a worse - less Christian - Archbishop of Canterbury then Selby?.
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So we’re told by our present government that we should respect the remembrance events because our grandparents and their parents fought for the rights the present government is taking away from us. Have I got that right?.
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If you have integrity you don’t announce it publicly, you show it in your actions. Starmer tells everyone he has integrity (‘that’s the sort of person I am’), but his behaviour says otherwise. #BrokenPledges #Stalinism.
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Netanyahu’s IDF behave like Hitler’s SS, and Biden, Starmer & co. look the other way, even supplying arms and giving succour to Goebbels-like Israeli propaganda lies. It’s beyond comprehension and forgiveness. WE SHALL NOT FORGET! EVER!.
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While we’re on about Thatcher, it’s worth recalling her most obvious legacy, which is that the dogged, unyielding pursuit of self-interest is not only ok but good for us all. It was a trick to cover a redistribution to the better-off. She made selfishness acceptable. Awful woman.
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Always seems to trigger conversations, or at least looks, from strangers in Mole Valley!
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George Galloway is a one-off, but his result in Rochdale has exposed the passivity and inaction of Labour’s socialist MPs. They’ve had several windows of opportunity to create a new socialist party since Starmer took over.
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Solidarity with @HackneyAbbott, a remarkable woman, socialist and pioneer to whom we are all indebted. The racist abuse she has suffered is intolerable, and now we find she has been abused by putative colleagues in Labour too. Well she has my respect and gratitude. 👏👏✊️✊️.
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Starmer’s praise of Thatcher, like Blair before him, puts him totally beyond the pale. Thatcher introduced and represented the very worst of neoliberal inequality. Thatcher was the antipathy of socialism.
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Disappointed that more people don’t decline ‘honours’. It’s a corrupted and outdated institution that helps keep privilege alive and well.
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I never expected in my lifetime to witness so many once-respectable figures resort to such outrageous lies and smears against someone who is by common consent one of the most decent people in politics. It's beyond shameful and my admiration for Corbyn's stoicism knows no bounds.
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Several academics have reacted negatively to colleagues publishing on #COVID19. I disagree. While those in epidemiology and public health will need the dust to settle to learn lessons, it strikes me as urgent that sociologists facilitate debate NOW about forging better futures.
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Who would ever have thought that we would watch war crimes being committed day after day on our TVs, while our gov and the opposition just sat on their hands? No worse, while our politicians asked the war criminals if they needed more weapons. This feels like a turning point.
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Very pleased to learn that my book has been chosen by the IACR as book of the year, 2019. Equally delighted to accept an invitation to give the Cheryl Frank Memorial Lecture in 2020. Thanks to all involved.
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We need a full investigation of the multiple ways in which pro-Israel lobbyists influence UK politics. Don’t be put off by the calculated weaponisation of tropes, antisemitism, even the Holocaust, by those wanting to block such an investigation. We must hold our nerve.
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I’ve called COVID-19 a natural ‘breaching experiment’: by disrupting ‘normality’, it is laying bare our #FracturedSociety. Structural inequalities are now obvious. What’s surprising is that it’s surprising people. We’ve known for decades. Time now to wake up. #sociology.
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#CoronavirusPandemic So I was right. Yesterday’s mortality stats were lower because they ‘changed the criteria’! In other words they’re fiddling the figures to make it look like the gov’s strategy is working.
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72 today - 3: and it’s a happy birthday to him, from the Badgers pub outside Petworth.
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Among the mosaics at the Roman villa at Bignor in Sussex.
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Public opinion is shifting, & rightly so. Israel is the long-term occupying force guilty of robbing Palestinians of their land & homes & imposing political & cultural apartheid on them. And it is Israel who is committing war crimes. The US, UK & their allies are complicit.
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When are sociologists going to go beyond (1) confirming that health inequalities exist, (2) saying the causes are structural, and (3) postulating policy reforms that are not going to happen, & turn our attention instead to (4) the ‘power politics’ of structural transformation?.
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I support @DerbyChrisW and my CLP passed a motion in support of him. Read No.5 of the Jewish Board of Deputies 10 ‘instructions’ to Labour, now approved by leading candidates for the leadership. So I’m destined to be suspended along with @MVLabourParty, right? WAKE UP LABOUR!.
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Should Starmer be forced to resign over his Gaza stance?.
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‘Friends of Israel’ studied and critiqued for corrupting British politics. Not before time!
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Don’t let anyone tell you to stop doing politics during the pandemic. This is PRECISELY the time to plan a better future. ✌️.
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Interesting that those who reacted negatively to my attending today’s pro-Palestinian protest in London resorted almost without exception to inane name-calling abuse. Reasoning totally absent. Must be a moral there somewhere.
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We need to debunk idea of ‘proximal blame’ (ie blaming GPs for inaccessible treatment & care; teachers for COVID spreading in schools; supermarket staff for empty shelves). Need to focus on distal blame: (1) gov ineptitude & corruption, & (2) social structures that ‘permit’ (1).
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Does anybody else agree that we might just gradually do away with statues? I personally don’t buy into the concept of ‘heroes’ and ‘great’ men and women. Most truly remarkable people operate well under the radar and see entirely unknown to the ‘establishment’.
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As each day goes by I find my happiness at having left Starmer’s Labour Party grows. Frankly, it now stinks. I’m suspect Starmer will be ditched, but the Party had lost its soul for the foreseeable future.
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I suspect the ‘vote Starmer or get the Tories’ brigade don’t quite know how it works. Labour are Tory ‘substitutes’, brought on to hold the fort while the Tories re-gather and in time re-enter the fray. The two-past-the-post system gives the illusion of democratic options.
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Pleased to be offered a contract by Routledge today to write ‘A Critical Realist Theory of Sport’. 👍.
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Biden gives Israel $26 billion in war aid as Netanyahu prepares to attack Rafah. Western imperialism alive and well via its proxy in the Middle East.
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I’ve spent my career examining British society. Evidence is: (1) more equal societies are more prosperous & harmonious; (2) equality has to be fought for; (3) Tories are the political arm of a small exploitative class deepening inequality; (4) capital buys power to make policy.
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A quick reminder that humans are not placed on this planet to either accept bullshit jobs or be punished.
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What an opportune time to introduce a universal basic income and phase in a four-day working week.
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Wonder what those ardent Remainers who castigated & ridiculed Corbyn are thinking now. If they hadn’t helped defeat him we’d now be anticipating a choice between a soft manageable Brexit & Remain. But hey, that Corbyn was obviously beyond the pale. Trump, can you help us please?.
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There have been many global trouble spots, slaughters & war crimes over the last generation. But in Gaza now we are all witnesses of the homicidal Israeli cleansing of the Palestinians & are aware that the UK gov is complicit. It’s sickening. Are we yet angry enough?.
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#COVID A plea to colleagues: could we try to avoid the lazy inference that because we disagree with ONE sociologist on COVID, NO sociologist has pertinent expertise on COViD? #stereotypes.
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I cannot get my head round the capitulation of otherwise intelligent humans to Israeli propaganda & outright lies on Gaza & the sufferings of Palestinians. We are literally watching war crimes being committed daily. The complicity of govs & putative intellectuals is sickening!.
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Sartre: ‘writers shouldn’t promise a better tomorrow, but by describing honestly the world as it is, they should trigger in people the will to change it for the better.’ Rather a good maxim I think. #sociology.
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Be very wary when Tories say we must look after the ‘poor, disadvantaged, vulnerable’ because we know from long experience - and the empirical evidence - that they really don’t give a shit.
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Just come across this is a drawer in my study, a generous comment from Jurgen Habermas on a chapter of mine that I’d obviously had the nerve to send him back in 1988.
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Going through final proofs. Due for publication on 1st Sept.
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Britain has always been a racist society. That racism in its many guises is now becoming more overt, even ‘acceptable’, is beyond disturbing.
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I am aware that there have been other war crimes in recent years, but never in my lifetime have I felt so inclined to name & call out evil than in the case of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Biden is more than complicit, & Sunak & Starmer tongue-tied bystanders. Sickening!.
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@DrNostromo It’s absolutely appalling Martin. Give her an apology and hug from all those of us who think it insulting and disgusting. 😡.
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There’s certainly an irony in publicly celebrating VE Day whilst leaving elderly people to die in care homes.
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First photo with my new iPhone reveals the mess in my study even more clearly.
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Do you think the public should boycott Eurovision because of Israel’s participation?.
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Starmer’s speech deeply pathetic. No charisma, just personal ambition. Shallow cliches and an extraordinary celebration of Labour as a policy-free vacuum.
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Anyone else agree that absence of broadband and access to the internet should be acknowledged as criteria for being in poverty?.
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Time for seasonal honesty. I had to resist my A levels (I can remember the misery and sense of failure). My colleague failed his 11+. We both ended up profs at UCL. Don’t despair. Even in these notably uncertain and difficult times, there’s always a route back. Hang in there. ✌️.
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A selection from the works of Margaret Archer, who leaves a considerable legacy.
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#COVID My two principal grouses with academic colleagues are: (1) an incapacity to see the wood for the trees, and, relatedly, (2) a neglect of social drivers of COVID (ie structural inequalities, long-term neoliberal policy and government ineptitude and corruption. #sociology.
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Credit to all those who have rejected an ‘honour’ and the corrupt system that delivers them! Knighthoods, CBEs, OBEs and MBEs: 11 people who have said no over the years
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Very depressing to see the media go to Jeremy Hunt for ‘sensible’ comments on the #NHS and #SocialCare when this is the man who deliberately underfunded health and social care to pave the way for privatisation.
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Having enjoyed ‘The Dawn of Everything’, I’m now reading this delightful offering by @davidwengrow.
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Contracts now signed for the re-issue of these two from the 1980s.
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Weird. I thought @jeremycorbyn won the leadership election with a large majority! Nobody's told #bbcqt?.
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@paulmasonnews No, they’ve been trying to encourage TALKS! You really are a pathetic turncoat.
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So the troublesome fascists - Braverman’s boys - are protecting the Cenotaph and celebrating with nazi salutes, while hundreds of thousands of protesters for peace and a ceasefire in Gaza are apparently the ‘hate marchers’. Is that right?.
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Let me say this before the voting tomorrow. If you vote Tory you should hang your head in shame! You may be voting for what you perceive to be your personal interests, but you are: 1) fuelling the rich, & 2) condemning the MANY who are less well-placed to continuing despair.
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#COVID Among neglected #sociological issues are: (1) the emergence of state authoritarianism, (2) right-wing populism and racism, (3) cultural relativity and obfuscation, (4) anti-expertise, and (5) post-truth epistemologies.
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My head of dept once asked me what my major achievement was. When I said ‘four lovely daughters’ he just looked confused.
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@RevRichardColes Who’s talking about the ‘erasure of Jews’? It’s Palestinians who are being erased.
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If you don’t back Corbyn NOW you are - in effect if not intent- voting FOR continuing Tory rule and the ‘neoliberal’ transfer of resources from those born disadvantaged to those born advantaged. Wake up. Don’t just defy the evidence by looking the other way. #JC4PM.
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There are times, often while watching tv news, that I wonder what we sociologists are for. We are experiencing a devastating decade-long attack on working-class people in the UK and yet we seem to have so little to say about it. We don’t even seem angry. #sociology.
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