Notices by Pauline von Hellermann (pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

#FollowTheMoney 🧵56/n

- nurses, art gallery workers, conservation NGOs, academics, etc - all these jobs that people do out of love for something/one are poorly paid. Love is exploited. More love = less money.

Only love of money itself and nothing else is rewarded with money (high salaries, bonuses, etc). Maybe not surprising - what do you expect in capitalism - but not much honesty about it. All that neoliberal motivational #Passion talk (“my work is my passion”) - exploitative bollocks.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵57/n

This LinkedIn post resonates … wanted to share here just in case there are others who are in this situation too.

Also one reason I hardly ever add to this 🧵any more is that, of course, I am literally trying to #FollowTheMoney, or rather, divert some from somewhere to my bank account😄 #JobSearch #FediHire

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/staggmacey_this-week-a-friend-told-me-theyd-taken-activity-7325917928724336641-LOlX?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAIt0BkBUaNgLl_2JLMYW8cY32uxAbZO8FY&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 58/n

I think so much about middle class-ness at the moment. More research in news this week how it’s the top 10%, those with incomes over £36,000, who are largely responsible for CO2 emissions; but it’s even more than that; middle-class aspirations shape everything. So conscious of this now as I am so driven in finding work so as not to have to sell our (nice, middle class, highly mortgaged house). Then a friend just sent me this - must read. #ClimateDiary

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 44/n but also: #Redundancy has made me think deeply (of course!) about the role of money in personal decision making. I may be wrong but it feels like this is something we don’t talk about much, and yet it is is so central to everything! I DO want to talk about it, even if I have nothing insightful to say actually. Just a few observations.

1. Money was at core of my decisions around redundancy. I have two teenage children and a high mortgage.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 45/n

I could not go for lovely 0.5 offered, or for tribunal; I had to opt for enhanced redundancy. If had chosen tribunal route i would have probably been able to keep my job as the 12 who did (who were able to do so due to different financial circumstances) were all reinstalled in an even lovelier deal btw management and union. (The 64 of us eho accepted enhanced redundancy by deadline did not know this would happen).

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 46/n

2. Money is now also so core to all my decision-making in how to spend my time, what jobs to go for - and balancing the need for money with wanting to do good, environmental work, and things I enjoy and am good at. It is quite strange, I gave a lecture at SOAS in Feb this year on “Doing Work You Believe in and be paid for it”, on the very day the Goldsmiths mass redundancies were announced (will see if I can upload recording here)

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 47/n

This was a combination of two papers: one on unpaid Eastbourne climate activism, one on sustainability professionals in the palm oil sector. It is very strange that I gave that lecture and wrote that paper - this is me now! I am out here in the wilderness, having to make a living, and yes, doing consultancy work. Which, of course, as I am rapidly learning, does not have to mean “selling out “ - my current work for the RSPB is really rewarding.

https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/4717/

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 48/n here also a link to the other paper on Eastbourne climate activism, i’ve shared it before but doing so again as it has a brief section on what kind of work is rewarded by high salaries, and what isn’t. I still feel this is an incredibly important topic and not really talked about enough in #ClimateAction circles. Maybe we can talk about it more together here?

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/2/4/32

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 49/n Anyway, just to end for today: a huge, HUGE shout out ❤️ to everyone on here who works “freelance”, going from one projec to another (more on “projects” and projectification later - so important in itself). I am now realising the immense privilege of a secure job (not secure in my case, as it turned out), where you don’t have to think about where your money will come from in 6 months or whatever. It is a fundamentally different state of being. Everything now existential.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 50/n Today adding this excellent video by @RichardJMurphy on how “the City” is not our “Jewel in the Crown”, as Rachel Reeves put it, but a parasite extracting huge amounts of money for self-enrichment. It does not add any value to the economy.

So important to see the City for what it is.

https://youtu.be/yZYXZR4AXSY?si=YTtLWpLD7wzzt5hd

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 51/n Richard’s video has spurred me on to do a few posts now on #PrivateEquity. Long overdue here, because private equity is at the heart of how our world works!

(Just to state again: i am not an expert, just someone who is trying to make sense of our world by #FollowingTheMoney, in an eclectic 🧵)

To start with basics: what is private equity? I like this clear definition by Justin Robertson

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563460903288270

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 52/n

The amount of wealth and assets held by private equity is vast. The biggest private equity firm of all is of course #BlackRock, founded by Larry Fink in 1988. Here is a lovely Statistica chart showing how its “assets under management” grew from $1.31 trillion (i mean, not bad) to $10.41 trillion in 2024. Bloomberg predicts they will hit $15 trillion in a few years

https://www.statista.com/statistics/891292/assets-under-management-blackrock/

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 53/n I have to go now but over the next few days just want to talk about what this means: it means that so much of the world around us - restaurants, care homes, appartment blocks, student accommodation, etc etc, is all owned by private equity; that there is no escape.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 54/n

This article is hard to stomach for all those of us currently looking for work, and not finding anything suitable, or anything at all. But it’s good that at least rising #unemployment is recognised now.

My own #redundancy last year and subsequent struggles have made me so alert to all these wider structural changes; I am really scared that this may be just the beginning. Terrible combination of AI and money going only to the rich

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/10/britons-hunting-for-a-job-uk-jobseekers-pay?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#FollowTheMoney 🧵55/n

“Keri said her father had been “powered by unconditional love” but he felt the government took advantage of the nearly 6 million people like him who care for a loved one, saving the taxpayer at least £162bn a year.”

This reminded of a thought I had a while back: how salaries/wages are directly negatively correlated with love.

When you do something you love, or out of love, this is instantly punished by capitalism.

Carers, nursery workers -

https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/mar/24/nobody-found-him-in-time-how-neglect-and-stress-led-to-the-deaths-of-a-full-time-carer-and-his-son?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Gaza: ‘Worst-case scenario’ unfolds as brutal aid blockade threatens mass starvation

https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/05/1162851

#ClimateDiary Well this is quite something. Power outage in Spain and Portugal due to 'extreme temperature variations'. Noting this in #ClimateDiary, of course.

EDIT: this is according to the Portuguese Grid Operator REN, Not sure whether it's an accepted explanation overall yet.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-portugal-power-outage-cut-electricity-live-updates-b2740780.html

#ClimateDiary As a non-catholic, non religious person finding myself very sad that #PopeFrancis has died, worried about what will come next.

I am thinking of his #LaudatoSi on “care for our common home”

“The idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology … is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit.”

https://laudatosimovement.org/news/whats-the-best-2-page-summary-youve-seen-of-laudato-si/

There are just too many awful things happening in the world, all at once. And in between everything else, the horrors in #Gaza go on and on. Each of these deaths a total tragedy.

Fatima Hassouna, who had been documenting war in Gaza for 18 months and was subject of new documentary, killed along with 10 members of her family

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/18/gaza-photojournalist-killed-by-israeli-airstrike-fatima-hassouna?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Israel expands ground assault on Gaza, vows to seize extensive territory #Gaza

Defence minister announces a major expansion of Israel’s assault on Gaza and says large areas of enclave will be siezed.

https://aje.io/gyap3w