UK
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The modern return of Vagrancy Law By Joe Hermer
The crime of ‘being suspicious’ seems to be making a return as the state seems ever more keen to police the poor and vulnerable. The recent case of ‘stolen food’ from Iceland is a perfect example. Continue reading
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Triple-headed NHS privacy scare after hospital data reach marketers, Google By Simon Sharwood
On page eight, a section titled “The cloud can transform the way the NHS connects and uses data” the discussion turns to “an archive called Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)” that contains “a huge amount of detailed data” about the activity of “every Hospital in England.” A busy time, then, for HSCIC’s spin doctors and a… Continue reading
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Can anyone patch up care.data, or is it too late? By Jane Fae
Care.data has had a bad seven days. Last Tuesday it received a serious mauling by the Commons Health Committee. On Friday, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt came sailing to the rescue with an announcement of new laws that will bar the NHS from selling personal medical records for insurance and commercial purposes – though care.data boss… Continue reading
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UK: Sun, sand…and indefinite detention By Jennifer Allsopp
The UK’s second largest immigration detention centre is about to open in Weymouth. Jennifer Allsopp reports on local responses to the immanent presence of hundreds of foreigners, locked up off the coast of this small and friendly town. Continue reading
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Video: Which way forward for Labour?
We publish here recordings and a report of a recent debate at the Cambridge Marxist Society, where Adam Booth, editor of www.socialist.net, Jon Lansman, editor of Left Futures, and Matthew Doyle, former political director to Tony Blair, discuss the future of the Labour Party. Continue reading
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Secret government contracts undermine our democracies. Let’s stop them By Jonathan Gray
How do we know that the money we collectively give to our governments is being properly spent? We don’t. A new campaign seeks to change that. Continue reading
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Government brushes aside NHS Free Trade Treaty Concerns By Ben Cooper
MPs raise concerns about the impact the forthcoming trade treaty, TTIP, will have on the NHS – but Minster Without Portfolio Ken Clarke says it will make no difference. The government refused to exempt the NHS from the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) despite a volley of concerns from opposition MPs aired during… Continue reading
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Is selling our medical data to insurers a crime – or not? By Jane Fae
As more revelations emerge about the sale of our hospital data to the insurance industry, misleading claims that a massive expansion in data collection is totally safe, are failing to convince. Continue reading
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Hospital closure clause – day of action 27th February
Fight to protect your local hospital from fast-track closure! A day of action in London on Thursday 27th February. Continue reading
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Drone Wars: UK Becomes New Pakistan? Live Drone Training Flights Target Local Residents
Drone Wars UK understands that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) will announce on Monday (24 Feb) that live training flights of the Watchkeeper drone will begin over Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. Continue reading
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Moazzam Begg a Political Prisoner Again By Craig Murray
Moazzam Begg has not been arrested for terrorism in Syria. He has been arrested to stop him digging for further evidence of complicity in torture by senior politicians and civil servants in the UK. Continue reading
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The David Miranda ruling and the attack on press freedom By Julie Hyland
The formulations employed by Lord Justice Laws, Mr. Justice Ouseley and Mr. Justice Openshaw in their judgement last Wednesday go far beyond this one incident—itself an unprecedented assault on journalistic freedom. They point to the outlawing of any notion of a “free press.” On the spurious grounds of “anti-terrorism” and “national security”, no one is… Continue reading
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NHS privatisation: Compilation of financial and vested interests
This list represents the dire state of our democracy. The financial and vested interests of our MPs and Lords in private healthcare. Continue reading
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UK: Refugee women in the UK: fighting back from behind bars By Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi
The experience of female asylum seekers is distinct to their gender, particularly when survivors of rape and torture, perpetrated by male state officials, are imprisoned and guarded by men here in the UK. Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi reports on the campaign to set them free. Continue reading
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The land of the living dead: Jeremy Paxman and Max Hasting’s Britain By Gerry Hassan
Britain’s elite is telling misleading stories about its noble history because for the majority of British people there is little hope for the future. The UK has become a state obsessed with the power of the past – but a re-imagined past created to mask the exhaustion of the older, positive accounts and the wanton… Continue reading
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Don’t close our hospitals on the quiet, protesters tell Health Secretary By Jos Bell
From Yorkshire to London, hospitals are under threat – and the government is trying to make them far easier to close on the quiet…Lewisham Campaigners were in usual dogged but polite mode when they dropped in to see Jeremy Hunt. He can’t say he wasn’t warned. A year ago he had hidden from a Valentine’s… Continue reading
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medConfidential Bulletin, 21st February 2014
As you will by now be aware, on Tuesday afternoon the Director of Patients and Information at NHS England, Tim Kelsey, announced a second 6 month delay to the uploading of data from GP practices across England. The first delay to uploads last September was only achieved after medConfidential had alerted the Information Commissioner’s Office… Continue reading
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Police State UK: UK ruling against David Miranda escalates assault on democratic rights By Robert Stevens
In what was clearly a politically motivated judgment, the High Court in London ruled Wednesday that David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained lawfully when he was held for nine hours last August at London’s Heathrow Airport. The 28-year-old Brazilian was in transit from Germany to Brazil when he was arbitrarily detained… Continue reading
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All washed out: What floods reveal about UK political elite By Neil Clark
The terrible impact that the ongoing floods have had over large parts of Britain – and the government response to the disaster – tells us much about the political system we now live under and in whose interests our government acts. Continue reading
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Police State UK/US: Authoritarian Regimes (Like the U.S. and Britain) Treat Reporters Like Terrorists
It is widely known that authoritarian regimes use “anti-terror” laws to crack down on journalism. But this extreme tactic is becoming more and more common. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported a year ago that terrorism laws are being misused worldwide to crush journalism: Continue reading
The New Dark Age 