Tiny Tips (2023)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

A video has captured the dramatic moment a £300,000 Roll-Royce was hoisted up to a penthouse on request of a billionaire in China. The luxurious Rolls-Royce Ghost was sent up to the 44th floor of a high-rise building after the wealthy businessman decided he wanted his car parked on his balcony (tinyurl.com/3ytvh63e).

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Eswatini heads to the polls soon, with elections scheduled for September. But there’s nothing remotely democratic in prospect. The country remains ruled by King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch, who presides over Eswatini with an iron fist. Mswati dissolved parliament on 11 July, confident there’s little chance of people who disagree with him winning (tinyurl.com/msbaae72).

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‘Legislative protections remain weak across the continent,’ the researchers who collated the results of the survey said in a response to questions. In ‘Somalia, Somaliland, Mauritania and Northern Nigeria homosexuality can be punishable by death,’ they said (tinyurl.com/4buzjv55).

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Disadvantaged Britons are dying 10 years sooner than their wealthier compatriots – victims of what’s become known as the ‘shit life syndrome’ – a life marked by poor living conditions, disease and addiction. The documentary profiles people who have a job but can still afford nothing – from Blackpool in the west, to Ashton-under-Lyne and Cumbria, on the border with Scotland (tinyurl.com/3scyx5a6).

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A Labour government in the UK under Starmer will bring no significant changes in economic or foreign policy and will make no difference whatsoever to the lives of working class people (tinyurl.com/4hw9pey3).

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When I spoke to Cohen [co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream], the group’s primary donor, according to Fritz, he echoed the ad’s key points, saying U.S. arms manufacturers saw NATO’s expansion as a ‘financial bonanza.’ ‘In the end, money won,’ he said with a resigned tone. ’And today, not only are they providing weapons to all the new NATO countries, but they’re providing weapons to Ukraine.’ I told Cohen I could understand his opposition to the war and follow his critique of U.S. foreign policy, but I couldn’t grasp how he could take a position that put him in the same corner as a government that is bombing civilians. He refused to be drawn in. ‘I’m not supporting Russia, I’m not supporting Ukraine,’ he said. ‘I’m supporting negotiations to end the war instead of providing more weapons to continue the war’ (tinyurl.com/2p827284).

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The federal minimum wage in the United States would be $42 an hour today if it rose at the same pace as Wall Street bonuses in recent decades. But it hasn’t. Monday marks 14 years since the last federal minimum wage increase—the longest stretch without a boost since the late 1930s, when the national wage floor was first established. Since 2009, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour, pay that’s currently not liveable in any state in the US (tinyurl.com/35jebfkm).

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The implication of Kennedy’s statement is that the [Covid-19] disease is a biological weapon created by Chinese researchers and Jewish American scientists to kill Christians (bit.ly/44PAouB).