UK
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If Owen Paterson was your GP, would you look for a new one? By David McCoy
Paterson, as Secretary of State for the Environment, leads on government policy on climate change. His reaction to the latest report on the physical science of climate change by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raises questions about his fitness to play this vital role. If his attitude towards the care of the planet… Continue reading
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Hunt seeks to shed his duty to keep our medical data safe By Benedict Cooper
Last week in a public committee session of the Care Bill, MPs grilled Conservative ministers within the Department of Health over the dangers of the “unintended consequences” of changes to the way data is handled which could, they said, lead to private providers and insurance companies gaining access to confidential records. Continue reading
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Snowden Confirms Spy Agency Launched False Flag Attacks and Used Honey Traps
We’ve repeatedly noted that the spy agencies aren’t just like giant peeping Tom’s, but they use their capabilities in mischievous offensive actions. Continue reading
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UK Conservatives face crisis over referendum on European Union By Julie Hyland
British Prime Minister David Cameron is threatening to invoke the Parliament Act, to force a bill on the UK holding a referendum on European Union (EU) membership (UK) onto the statute books. Continue reading
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UK national health records database to have ‘backdoors’ for police, govt?
While care.data will not store the names of the patients, it will include National Health System numbers, dates of birth, postcodes, ethnicity and sex, in addition to health condition and prescribed drugs. The goal is to sell access to the data to university researchers, health insurance companies and other parties, which can make use of… Continue reading
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Care.data questions mount – just who’ll get our medical data? By Jane Fae
Official attempts to inform patients about what will happen to their data when the new care.data database is implemented are inadequate and, on the latest evidence, seriously misleading. In August of last year, the Information Commissioner warned GPs they’d likely breach Data Protection Act if they allowed their patient data to be uploaded to care.data… Continue reading
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The Quenelle: Blame Dr Strangelove and the Bomb By Stuart Littlewood
The Quenelle is a gesture, some claim, made famous by the French comic Dieudonné M’bala M’bala. As explained by the BBC it involves touching or gripping your shoulder with one hand while holding the palm of your other hand outstretched and pointing to the ground. “Some describe it as a combination of the bras d’honneur… Continue reading
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Police State UK: Democratic rights under attack in Scotland By Steve James
An unprecedented police and legal clampdown is underway in Scotland. Primarily directed against young people, an escalation of stop and search measures has been unearthed by a recent report from Edinburgh University. According to the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, the rate with which particularly youth are stopped in working class areas of… Continue reading
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Police State UK: GCHQ secret unit uses DDOS attack tactics against Anonymous – Snowden leak
British intelligence has its own hacker subdivision that uses questionable practices for hunting down enemies of the state, reveals a new leak from Edward Snowden. GCHQ is fighting Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists with DDoS attacks and malware. Continue reading
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UK “bedroom tax” leads to record requests for emergency assistance By Mark Blackwood and Paul Mitchell
More than 200,000 people requested emergency assistance from local councils in the six months after the bedroom tax and other cuts to benefits were introduced in April of last year. Continue reading
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The London Underground strikes
The Mayor of London, who campaigned for election on the promise of keeping ticket offices open, now plans to close every London Underground ticket office as part of this budget cut. The first tranche of cuts will also see the loss of nearly 1000 front line, safety critical and customer facing station jobs. Continue reading
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Should David Cameron be Prosecuted for Recruiting Brits to Fight in Al Qaeda Ranks in Syria? By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
According to the London Evening Standard, a top British prosecutor has “warned that Britons who travel to join the Syrian conflict will face prosecution and potential life sentences on their return.” What the British prosecutor fails to address is that the British “freedom fighters” are being recruited with the full support of the British government… Continue reading
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85 billionaires rule the world: rich elite robs the poor By Rob Sewell
In Britain, a handful of super-rich plutocrats control our lives. On a world scale, according to Oxfam, a mere 85 top billionaires, who could all comfortably fit into a double-decker bus, own more wealth than half of the world’s population put together. Continue reading
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‘Maybe we haven’t been clear enough about med records opt-out’, admits NHS data boss By Kelly Fiveash
NHS data chief Tim Kelsey admitted today that the health service had failed to adequately inform patients about how they can opt out of having their GP medical records shared throughout England. Continue reading
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Police State UK: Making UK citizens non-persons By Alice Ross and Patrick Galey
Last week at Westminster, the home secretary introduced a late amendment to an immigration-control bill which would allow her to make UK citizens stateless—without first requiring recourse to the courts. MPs voted last week at Westminster overwhelmingly in favour of giving the home secretary, Theresa May, powers to make people stateless if she felt they… Continue reading
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UK police marksman will not be charged for killing Anthony Grainger By Trevor Johnson
Within days of a London jury’s decision January 8 that the police killers of unarmed father of four Mark Duggan were acting within the law, the UK government’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) pushed through a similar decision in regard to the killing of Anthony Grainger. Continue reading
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Spy Agencies Work On Psychologically Profiling Everyone
Newly-released documents from Edward Snowden show that the NSA and other spy agencies are tracking people’s psychological and lifestyle traits such as sexual preference, extroversion-versus-introversion, and whether people are leaders or followers. Continue reading
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Will transatlantic trade treaty really boost wages and growth, asks TUC By Owen Tudor
As Davos trade negotiators announced they would ‘consult’ over one part of the controversial deal, the TUC met them to ask if the deal would really benefit ordinary people – or just offer up our public services to multinational investors. Continue reading
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‘Doing more with less’, the low paid and the unpaid By Shibley Rahman
Re-engineering the health system has become a hobby of thinktankers, in the best spirit of the blind watchmaker. But policy wonks are still unable to escape from the fact that the NHS is not a widget factory. The management school of Frederick Taylor is unfit for purpose in considering outcomes rather than outputs. It can… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 