NHS
Suppose we got rid of the management pretence that public services can be run by trusts? What would that save?
As the FT notes this morning:
The British government could save at least £20bn a year by modernising IT systems, tackling fraud and getting a grip on failing mega-projects such as the HS2 rail line, according to the head of the UK government’s independent spending watchdog.
To be candid, I really do not doubt it.
But imagine how much more it could save if it stopped pretending that so much of the public sector was made up of independent organisations competing with each other rather than cooperating to provide integrated services.
Take this on the NHS. There are:
- 42 integrated care boards, which each have an integrated care partnerships
- 229 total number of trusts, including 154 foundation trusts
- 50 mental health trusts
- 10 ambulance trusts
- 124 acute trusts
Each of these will spend its life:
- Creating duplicated policy
- Accounting furiously to each other, billing like crazy and employing an army of accountants to reconcile the results
- Have its own PR and comms teams
- Spend a fortune on websites, glossy annual reports and more
- Duplicate management structures
And all for no gain and a lot of cost. Regional strategic health authorities could solve that.
And then there is education, where in 2022 (I struggled to find more up-to-date information quickly), there were 2,539 multi-academy trusts operating in England, made up of nearly 10,000 schools. That still left 17,500 outside trusts, rather surprisingly, but all these trusts suffer all the problems noted above, and destroy the chance of integrated education provision in any area, which should be the goal.
What if we got rid of all this nonsense? What would that save?
Cambridge Analytica-linked firm running NHS data signs deal to help Israel against Gaza
CEO signs ‘strategic’ battlefield AI deal, flies board to Israel in ‘show of solidarity’ in middle of genocide
Palantir – the firm linked to Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data and with close ties to Israel but still awarded a £330m contract, in the middle of the Gaza genocide – to process sensitive NHS patient data despite protests from doctors and civil liberties groups – has signed a ‘strategic’ deal to provide ‘battlefield AI’ and other ‘battle tech’ to Israel, according to Bloomberg:
Israel is currently engaged in mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians Gaza that has killed more than 30,000 civilians, mostly women and children, is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice brought against it by South Africa and has been accused of multiple other war crimes against the people of Gaza, including forcible transfer of the population and the targeting of hospitals, schools, journalists, homes and civilian infrastructure.
Despite this, the firm’s CEO last week flew the company’s board to Israel in a ‘show of solidarity’ with the regime:
The firm seems curiously reticent about its close ties with the Israeli regime, however. It’s press release page, which contains announcements going back to 2018, does not mention Israel.
Palantir’s activities have been so troubling that even the Murdoch Times has asked whether the UK government is “handing our health data to Big Brother”.
The Palantir deal is not the only example of the UK government promoting and rewarding companies with close ties to Israel during the Gaza genocide. Sunak’s crew has also awarded cash to UK universities, as the world clamours for an academic boycott, to promote closer ties with Israeli universities.
The UK Establishment clearly values cash and commerce above the lives of Palestinian civilians, above justice and above peace.
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Loyalty to the NHS Won’t Stop an Exodus of Underpaid Junior Doctors
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The longest strike in NHS history by junior doctors has taken place, with junior doctors in England striking for six days from 7am on Wednesday 3 January until 7am on Tuesday 9 January. The British Medical Association (BMA) are pushing for junior doctors to get a 35% pay rise, which would restore pay to 2008 wages, in line with inflation. There are also concerns over changes to employment contracts which may see extended working hours without compensation which jeopardises both patient safety and the wellbeing of doctors. The strike ended with no progress on pay talks and the junior doctors intending to hold ballots on further strike action.
Junior doctors are qualified medical professionals, working full time while engaged in post-graduate research or further specialist training, and they are crucial in delivering healthcare across the UK – from patient consultations to performing medical procedures and research. They work long hours in demanding conditions, particularly during winter with rising COVID admissions to hospitals across the country, this issue cannot be ignored any longer by the Government.
In the middle of all of this, medical students training to be doctors find themselves uncertain of their future employment. Not only in terms of pay but working conditions, a viable work-life balance, and the impact on mental and physical health.
Last year, it was revealed that some trusts have asked unqualified medical students to step in during strike days, even though their placements in hospitals are meant to be purely educational.
Medical students cannot strike as postgraduate doctors can but are allowed to show support to picket lines, under BMA guidance, and are protected under BMA guidelines if they are asked to do more than is required or to take the place of a junior doctor.
Steve, a final year medical student in Manchester expressed full backing for the strikes: “There is overwhelming support for the strikes – they are fighting for our careers, for better investment in the services and better working conditions.”
Steve explained that the strikes have had an impact on students’ training: “We get more one-on-one with consultants which is great for learning and experience on the wards, but we shouldn't have to get that because our colleagues are on strike", he said, arguing that this demonstrates the existing problems in the NHS.
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Around £2 billion was spent last year by the NHS to cover the costs of the strikes, which included paying for consultants to cover. Critics have argued that the strikes cause chaos in an already chaotic system.
“The argument is that the strikes will cause overcrowding and overflows, but that was already happening before the strikes and will be happening after the strikes end. The service has been damaged for years with a lack of investment across so many areas,” Steve told Byline Times. “I recall being in A&E one night and there were three separate overflow areas – that was before any strike action.”
There are concerns about the future workforce of the NHS about whether or not they will remain in the UK and the NHS. Last year, a survey of 10,400 people from the UK's 44 medical schools found 32% of participants were planning to practise abroad in countries such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia. An exodus of doctors from the service would be dangerous and while there are those that will stay, some would only stay two years (foundational years) before changing careers.
“I completely understand why people want to move abroad. You hear that it is much better in New Zealand, and Australia – from working hours to pay and overall health,” Steve said, “And we’re also probably going to see more people wanting to work in private health rather than public health. We all feel gratitude to the NHS – personally for me, that is why I would still work for them – but gratitude is not enough to sustain a workforce.”
In a written statement sent to Byline Times, Dr Latifa Patel, BMA representative body chair, said: "There have been increasing concerns about doctors, at the start of their careers, deciding to leave the UK and we have seen blatant recruitment campaigns to urge them to do so. However, this survey reveals the very real and worrying trend of doctors making the decision, even before they have qualified, to either practise medicine overseas, leave the NHS or leave the profession altogether. It is disheartening that medical students already recognise the extent to which our profession has been devalued through constant pay erosion and declining working conditions, and have made up their minds, as a result, that the NHS is not the right place for them to work. They are investing seven years of their lives, starting out with the intent to be a doctor in our NHS, only to have that enthusiasm and commitment crushed out of them.
"The Government cannot continue to turn a blind eye to this increasingly untenable situation. This study clearly shows that increasing medical school places alone is not enough to turn the tide on the growing workforce crisis. It is not too late to fix this, but the power to do so rests with the Government. Retention must be prioritised, and plans must address pay restoration, career progression and working conditions. The Government making a credible offer to our members to reverse 15 years of declining pay must be the starting point."
When Steve graduates from his university medical degree, he will enter the UK Foundation Programme as an ‘F1’ – a first year foundation trainee doctor. “The government says that it costs around £300,000 to train us – so why not pay us properly if we are worth so much?” Steve said, “As a medical student, I am incredibly nervous about next year. I can only imagine how stressful it will be for me and my soon-to-be fellow F1s.”
Pro-Israel lawyer group tries to threaten Tower Hamlets to take down Palestine flags
UK Lawyers for Israel waves criminality threat at mayor Lutfur Rahman and council with claim local Jews feel threatened – a tactic seen and discredited before – but police already said in October no offence had been committed
Right-wing pro-Israel pressure group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel’ (UKLFI) has tried to force Tower Hamlets council and its mayor Lutfur Rahman to remove Palestinian flags put up by residents in solidarity with people facing occupation and genocide in Gaza – by threatening Rahman and his colleagues with criminalisation if they do not.
The group has form. Manchester University – to widespread outrage in the art world – pressured its museum director to resign for daring to host a display by Forensic Architecture, the science group that has criticised the Israeli regime for extrajudicial killings and other illegal actions, after UKLFI claimed the display was provocative. Forensic Architecture is also known for having debunked Israeli military lies attempting to blame the bombing of Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of refugees sheltering there, on a misfired Hamas rocket.
UKLFI also pressured Chelsea and Westminster hospital into taking down a harmless display of plates painted by Palestinian children by claiming Jewish patients had said they were distressed by them – but a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that not a single complaint had been made by patients or visitors.
The group was criticised by Jewish human rights group Na’amod for inviting an Israeli right-wing extremist group to speak in the UK and has been accused of links with the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs. The European Legal Support Centre accused UKLFI of using ‘lawfare’ as a ‘politically motivated’ weapon and said that the group “has been attempting to smear and disrupt the work of Palestinian human rights groups and their partners for years”.
UKLFI paid an out of court settlement to a Palestinian children’s charity it had libelled by claiming the charity gave “financial or material support to any terrorist organization” and admitted that UKLFI supported the ‘Ministry of Strategic Affairs’, an ‘Israeli black-ops department’ that tries to undermine the ‘Boycott Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign against the Israeli occupation and to delegitimise Palestinian solidarity actions globally. Broadcast regulator Ofcom rejected a UKLFI complaint that a Channel 4 video featuring Palestinian young people was unfair to it.
Tower Hamlets council appeared to call the group’s bluff. A council spokesperson said:
As one of the most diverse areas in the country, we are monitoring any community tensions closely with our tension monitoring group, which includes the police and representatives from a broad range of community organisations.
A number of Palestinian flags have been put up by the public in recent months. While we appreciate people want to express their support for Palestine, we have a routine responsibility to monitor and maintain council infrastructure. The situation is under regular review…
We are not aware of any criminal offences related to Palestinian flags not being removed, and we will continue to work closely with police partners to manage the situation.
And the council has reason to be confident. When attempts – not explicitly linked to UKLFI in reports – were made in October to us a similar tactic to force it to remove Palestinian, the Met Police said that as far as they were concerned, no criminal act had been committed.
Exclusive: Streeting uses NHS privatisation announcement to tout IDF-linked health firm
Health privatisation enthusiast ‘Labour’ health spokesman namechecks Israeli military-linked firm as glowing example of private involvement in NHS – and visited firm in Israel on LFI-paid junket
Image by ‘The Agitator‘
As the death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza climbed above 30,000 this week according to observers EuroMed Monitor, Wes Streeting used an Israeli private health data company as his shining example of successful ‘entrepreneurialism’ – ie privatisation – in the NHS as ‘a source close to Mr Streeting’ briefed the media about his plans to ‘throw open the doors’ of the NHS to more private corporate provision if Labour gets into government.
The ‘source’ told the i:
Labour will encourage the spread of new technologies so private sector “innovators” have a clearer route to get their product into the NHS…
The best example on the tech side of ‘opening the door to entrepreneurs’ is where you’ve got a company or innovator of a product which works really well on the NHS. There’s an example of some at home kidney tests made by Healthy.io which were first sold into the NHS in 2021
But the link – and the Labour trolling of those outraged by the Gaza slaughter – goes much further. Healthy.io is owned and run by Yonatan Adiri, former Chief Technology Officer for the whole of Israel and an adviser to then-Israeli PM Shimon Peres. Adiri’s interests are not limited to private healthcare tech. His published works include Terror in the Court: Counter-Terrorism and Judicial Power in the Israeli Case Study and Counter Terror Warfare: The Judicial Front (2008), written for the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (2005).
Adiri’s interest in ‘counter-terror’ did not end in 2008. Just two months ago, shortly after the Hamas kibbutz raid, Adiri spoke to Bloomberg Technology ‘The importance of Intelligence in Israel-Hamas war’, comparing Hamas to ISIS and talking of the use of technology by intelligence services to defeat the Palestinian resistance organisation:
Skwawkbox did not find details of any involvement with Israeli spytech unit ‘Unite 8200’ – the cyberspy unit whose members reportedly paint an ‘X’ on their headsets for each Palestinian they help kill – in Adiri’s IDF service, but according to his bio page as a speaker for hire on allamericanspeakers.com, he remains a reserve captain in the ‘international operational negotiations unit’ and has acted as moderator at discussions held by the Israeli-government-sponsored Institute for National Security Studies on the use of drones and other technology for ‘national security’:
According to one article, Adiri acted for the IDF in negotiating a prisoner swap with Lebanese militia group Hezbollah.
Adiri also acted as senior national security ‘policy consultant’ for the Reut Institute, a right-wing Israeli think tank that now plays a key role in Israel’s attempts to counter the peaceful pro-Palestinian ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement.
And while Adiri may not have been a member of Unit 8200, he is – since at least March 2023 – an ‘industry mentor’ for the ‘LEAP’ initiative:
The LEAP website says that:
Leap was created in partnership with 8200bio, an organization of 8200 alumni working to promote the Israeli healthtech ecosystem. The program does strive to bring exceptional 8200 alumni into the healthtech domain, but the program is open to entrepreneurs of any background, according to the criteria described above.
Like its partner 8200 Impact, 8200bio is run by former members of what 8200 Impact calls the ‘elite IDF Signal Intelligence and Cybersecurity unit’. Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted in 2020 that:
Nor did Wes Streeting simply pull the name Healthy.io out of a hat without knowing the company’s links. In May 2022, according to right-wing pressure group Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), Streeting visited Israel on LFI’s dime – and LFI said ahead of the trip that:
Streeting will also visit Healthy.io, a tech provider for the NHS and Boots.
Right-wing libel-merchant and ‘dauphin of phone hacking‘ Lee Harpin, writing for Jewish News rather than the Jewish Chronicle that he cost so much money in damages for smearing left-wingers, confirmed that the visit went ahead. Streeting told the NHS Confederation last spring that he had been ‘blown away’ by his trip.
Keir Starmer employs a Unit 8200 alumnus, Assaf Kaplan, to monitor members’ social media.
Wes Streeting has come out as an avid NHS privatiser – which will surprise no one who has been watching. That he chose to garnish his promise to ‘throw open the doors’ of the NHS to more private profit-taking by touting an Israeli – and Israeli military-linked – firm during Israel’s war crimes, mass slaughter of women, children, medics and teachers and the bombing of hospitals and schools, in Gaza makes the betrayal even worse.
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Exclusive: smeared ex-Lab member Siddiqi ‘planning to stand vs Streeting’
Victim of repeated smears and even a discredited prosecution is planning a bid at the next Ilford North parliamentary election, say locals
Syed Siddiqi, the former Labour member repeatedly abused, harassed and smeared by right-wing Labour figures in Ilford in north London, is planning to stand against right-winger Wes Streeting in the next Ilford North parliamentary election, according to local sources.
Siddiqi has faced constant harassment by the party right, including a failed attempt to prosecute him that ended in all charges being dropped – reminiscent of the disgraced hatchet job against neighbouring left-wing Muslim MP Apsana Begum.
The party’s hounding of Siddiqi even went as low as suspending him for more than three years after he was the victim of a foul, late-night Islamophobic tirade by a local right-winger, despite the whole incident being recorded. His abuser was quickly reinstated so that he could stand for Labour in local elections.
Siddiqi was revealed to have been targeted by Streeting’s office and others, by the leaked party report into abuse by the party right:
Labour has a long and appalling record of Islamophobia and of protecting abusive right-wingers. Local council leader Jas Athwal was selected as the party’s candidate in Ilford South, after complaints of ‘serious sexual assault’ were dismissed by a committee of Labour national executive members – against the advice of the party’s barrister. He won the selection vote when six hundred postal votes ‘turned up’ late in proceedings, while supporters of his opponent, incumbent MP Sam Tarry, were denied entry to the selection meeting. Labour general secretary David Evans dismissed the evidence as ‘irrelevant to the result.
The party has reason to fear the challenge. Last year, Lutfur Rahman ousted Labour to win the executive mayor’s position in nearby Tower Hamlets last year and voters there kicked out Labour at the last local elections in a landslide for Rahman’s new Aspire party. In neighbouring East End borough Newham, Newham Independents leader Mehmood Mirza hammered an imposed Labour candidate in May – and his colleague Sophia Naqvi then trounced Labour in November’s by-election in Newham Plaistow North.
With discontent spreading in the area and Black councillor Shanell Johnson quitting Labour in Redbridge, which covers both Ilford seats, in disgust at the local and national party’s conduct, few would be surprised to see similar developments threatening Labour’s complacency there too; particularly with an incumbent MP as dislikeable as Streeting, Starmer’s pro-privatisation health spokesman who has accepted donations from private health interests and who triggered protests outside his office – and a boycott by students – for his part in Starmer’s support for Israeli war crimes.
In 2018, Streeting also launched a ‘disgraceful’ and ‘disgusting’ tirade in the face of Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP, leaving Abbott ‘shell-shocked’. If he stands, Syed Siddiqi can expect considerable support from outraged former Labour supporters around the country who would be delighted to see Streeting ejected.
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Tories’ disgraced PR firm resorts to paying others to augment their attacks
There is regrettably, no real surprise there but it is undertaken in such an overt and egregious way, that it is quite shocking. In this instance it is the Good Law Project under fire: Emails and a secret briefing document reveal a paid-for campaign to attack Good Law Project on social media. Influencers are asked... Read more
We have malnutrition in the UK because our food manufacturers know that nothing is more profitable than hooking people on products destructive to their wellbeing
As The Guardian notes this morning:
More than 800,000 patients were admitted to hospital with malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies last year, a threefold increase on 10 years ago, according to NHS figures that have prompted warnings about the devastating health impact of food insecurity.
Hospital data for England and Wales, obtained by the Guardian, reveals a startling rise in diagnoses linked to poor diet in the past decade, with nearly half a million admissions of patients with iron deficiencies, hundreds of thousands suffering from vitamin deficiencies and more than 10,000 cases of malnutrition last year.
As they added:
Senior doctors said the trend mirrored their clinical experiences, with a growing number of patients whose health problems are rooted in poverty.
How did we reach the point where our society has failed so badly that malnutrition is now a first world problem?
First, most politicians do not care about people. They only care about the wealth of a few.
Second, they have, as a result, sponsored and promoted deliberately callous false theories of economics to justify this indifference.
Third, based on those theories industries like big pharma and big sugar-based food production have been allowed to prosper. Superficially satisfying short-term sugar spikes have replaced vitamins and essential minerals in too many affordable diets.
Fourth, they have created methods of media consumption to promote those industries through mass advertising and subversive programming.
Fifth, they have underfunded the services that counter these destructive narratives, from Sure Start onwards.
Sixth, they have closed down the education that provides the necessary skills to create a balanced diet. Most people in this country cannot really cook, or even cook at all, which is shocking.
Seventh, our big food industry, from fast food vendors, to ultra-processed food manufacturers, to food retailers, have joined in a conspiracy to sell poor, sugar-based, diets whilst putting the blame for obesity on fat, where it does not belong.
So, how to solve this? The answer is straightforward. The requirement is regulation to demand better food whilst cutting sugar from diets. It could be done. But the resulting foods are not addictive, when sugar is. The result is there is less profit in them, because nothing is more addictive than hooking people on products destructive to their wellbeing.
Our current health secretary is, staggeringly, married to the Chair of British Sugar. She is also staggeringly incompetent. But so too is Labour’s Wes Streeting, who sees it as his job to belittle NHS staff and talk about apps for hospital management without ever bothering his little head about the root cause of the problems besetting the NHS, of which sugar intake of approximately six times daily safe limits (on average) is by far the biggest.
And so demand for NHS services will continue to outstrip supply as the demand for short term food industry profit is met whilst real people go hungry and malnourished because the only things they can afford to eat are poisoning them.
The New York Times has the measure of the NHS ‘problem’
As the conclusions suggest we are now at risk of abandoning the idea of Universal Health Care as a human right. Mind you we are fast learning that any sort of human right is just not something the increasingly fascist Conservative Party believes in. We don’t need a diffferent health care system – just properly... Read more
People know that migration is an issue being manufactured by the Tories to draw attention from their failings
I put this poll on Twitter last night. The response ratios stabilised after a couple of hundred votes had been recorded. It has attracted a lot more now:
Some people were upset that I did not offer more options, of which green issues was the most commonly suggested, but to be candid that was not the point of this exercise.
I posted the poll whilst watching discussion of migration and Rwanda policy. I was utterly bored of hearing Tory after Tory saying that stopping small boats is a matter of priority for the people of this country. I was sure that was not true. The poll was intended to test that hypothesis and I think the response shows that this is really not the issue the Tories claim it to be. For some it might be. Most can see it is a manufactured dead cat intended to distract from Tory failings elsewhere.
What did surprise me was the response to the last question, which I threw in as a ‘none of the a above option’ but which also tested whether people might opt for Labour out of conviction, or not. It is apparent that they are voting against the Tories, not for Labour. Maybe I should not have been surprised, but I was by the scale of this. Labour need to be worried.