Thursday 22nd December 2022

[refitman]

Morning all.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Good morefternoon to anybody here.

[frog222]

One of the many (possibly-unintended by the 'leaders') consequences of brexit , replacing european workers by those from poorer countries possibly bringing in more dependents … ?

Certainly not what the rank and file brexivoters intended

Richard Murray is chief executive of The Kings Fund–

” Membership of the EU meant it was relatively easy to offset some of these shortages by importing staff from our neighbours. For nurses and midwives, this meant pulling in just under 10,000 qualified staff in 2015-16.

The drop in new arrivals after Brexit was immediate and sustained, even if there were other factors at play as well, such a new language test to be able to practice in the UK. In 2021-22, fewer than 700 new nursing and midwifery staff came from the EU.

For those wanting to reduce migration, this may seem some sort of win. However, faced with an ongoing workforce crisis, the NHS has instead turned to countries outside the EU to fill vacancies. In 2015-16, just over 2,000 new nurses and midwives came to the UK from these countries. After Brexit, the number rose dramatically, reaching just under 23,000 by 2021-22. “

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nh ... 39955.html

[refitman]

Streeting can just keep fucking off.

[PaulfromYorkshire]

Semiactive truffle, chopped, has links to Labour front bench (9,8).

[frog222]

Streeting can just keep fucking off.

over the last few months, the Effective Altruism movement has been hard to ignore. Its leading light, Oxford University professor William MacAskill, has been on what just have been one of the biggest media rounds of the decade, at a cost of a reported $10m. He has appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Times, The New York Times, Time, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, The New Statesman, NPR, Wired, The Guardian, Virgin Radio, The Daily Show and countless others – mostly to promote his new book, ' What We Owe the Future'.

And while the community itself is small – one internal poll suggested fewer than 10% of US adults had any proper awareness of it and only a few thousand members have signed up to the movement’s pledges – its pockets are deep. One leader of the movement estimated that EA had roughly $46bn at its disposal, an amount that had grown by 37% a year since 2015.

There’s also something more sinister to EA’s growing prominence – what one member self-described as the “Ponzi-ishness” of the movement: it has become increasingly fixated on growing its numbers. In fact, Open Philanthropy, one of the largest EA funds, has spent some $234m – its fourth largest spend area – on growing the reach of the Effective Altruist community, with everything from building media ecosystems to a network of university EA societies. It has spent less than half this much on pandemic preparedness ($141.5m) and less than one 18th of this amount ($12.7m) on immigration reform. In the UK, my own research shows 20 of the UK’s 24 Russell Group universities have, or had, an EA student society. For a movement based on opposition to wasteful philanthropy, it’s an odd approach to take, to say the least.

In the US, Silicon Valley tech moguls are typically its biggest proponents – like Facebook founder Dustin Moskowtiz, infamous founder of crypto-exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried (who has just been charged with fraud in the US) and Elon Musk, who recently claimed ‘long termism’ is a “close match for my philosophy”.

And if it were restricted just to the fortunes of billionaires, that would be one thing – but given its growing size and focus on political policy, it seems plausible that at least some of its priorities will spill over into frontline policymaking.

The risk with a solely long-term view is that you sacrifice the short-term in its wake

Bankman-Fried, as just one example, funnelled tens of millions of dollars in donations to Democratic and Republican politicians in the US that he thought were sympathetic with the ideas EA focuses on – usually through anonymous, undisclosed “dark” donations.

Then there are groups like LLT. While it stresses that it isn’t an avowedly Effective Altruist group and does not have “any affiliations or funding from groups related to Effective Altruism”, its undisclosed deep pockets and long-termist policy priorities still pose a similar problem for Labour politics.

Undisclosed deep pockets so often lead back to US billionaires .

[AnatolyKasparov]

Streeting seems to keep doing "unfortunate" stuff like this, almost like its a pattern.

[frog222]

It's almost uncanny that we look at US drug prices, and pity the poor victims using eg insulin, then we find out that the UK govt is actually playing the same game ?

“” Between 2011 and 2017, the cost of medicines for NHS England grew from £13bn to £17.4bn – a 5% rise every year. In 2020, this reached £20.9bn. Yet the government is currently considering trade arrangements, leaked documents show, SEE BELOW , WTF ? that will increase this cost even further by forcing the NHS to buy from pharmaceutical monopolies instead of buying generic medicines.

By contrast, the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer recorded profits of $21bn last year. That amount could fund the nurses’ wage demand twice over – while also bringing in more revenue, through tax and spending, than corporate profits do. That should put the nurses’ demands in perspective. It’s not striking health workers who are holding the NHS at gunpoint – it’s the corporate compulsion to squeeze and extract.””

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/nhs-nu ... e-profits/

—————————————-

NEXT !

” By: Alena Ivanova
Date: 29 November 2022
Campaigns: Pharma

A draft chapter of the UK-India trade negotiations has been leaked – and it shows that the British government is pressuring India to adopt rules that would drive up medicine prices.

If agreed, the UK’s demands would threaten the NHS and have a devastating impact on public health across the world. This has got lost in the political chaos of the last few weeks – so it’s up to us to sound the alarm. That’s why we’re working with campaigning allies at Just Treatment to get the message to every MP in parliament.

The government’s apparent plan is to push through stricter intellectual property (IP) rules on India that would shore up big pharma’s medicine monopolies and drive up the price of cheap generic medicines produced in India. This won’t just harm the global south – a quarter of all medicines used in the NHS come from India’s successful generics industry.

This leak shows once again that this government is beholden to the interests of big pharma, even when it risks people’s health and access to medicines in the UK. We’ve been speaking out about the deeply undemocratic and damaging nature of the UK’s trade talks for several years, and pressure from backbench MPs is one of the main ways to cause a fuss.

Defend access to medicines
India is called ‘the pharmacy of the world’ for good reason – it provides 62% of all vaccines used globally, and is the largest producer of generic drugs in the world. Before we started this campaign, I didn’t realise that 1 in 4 medicines the NHS buys also come from India. Why would our own government risk driving up these prices to help big pharma make more money?

The NHS is already unable to use generic versions of drugs that are patented in the UK ( WTF ? )– but stifling India’s vital ability to produce generics could force the NHS to rely on expensive branded drugs from profiteering pharma companies for many more years.

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, recently said “it’s important that we get [trade deals] right rather than rush them, and so that’s the approach I’ll take.” This is a change from Liz Truss’s attempts to sign trade deals as soon as possible – and it creates an opportunity for us.

We need MPs to know just how badly wrong the UK’s demands in these negotiations have been.

Sounding the alarm
We recently wrote to the Secretary of State for International Trade to warn her against pursuing this big pharma wish list of demands.

These dodgy demands go far beyond already unfair global requirements and norms for intellectual property and will only benefit one group: the pharmaceutical industry and its shareholders.

Trade negotiations are often shrouded in secrecy and the government will do all it can to avoid accountability. With this leaked draft, we now have an idea what they’re up to, and it’s deeply worrying. With the future of the NHS and the essential medicines of millions at stake, we need to act now. “”

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2 ... expensive/

[refitman]

Well done Scotland. Hopefully the rest of the UK will follow at some point

[PaulfromYorkshire]

@refitman the GC brigade out in force in replies to that tweet - was victim of same myself last week!