Labour is Run by DEAD-BEHIND-THE-EYES Soulless Hacks – We Demand Change – Owen Jones
NHS trust apologises as man’s tumour death investigated for manslaughter
Guardian Exclusive: Richard Harris, 71, died last July after series of errors at troubled Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton
A troubled NHS trust has apologised to the family of a man who died after a series of potentially fatal delays to treat a tumour, in a case that is being investigated by police as possible corporate manslaughter.
Richard Harris, 71, died last July after a series of errors in the neurosurgery department at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton, which is part of University Hospitals Sussex NHS foundation trust (UHSussex).
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An internal review of Harris’s care found that doctors failed to arrange a routine MRI scan for him when he was first urgently referred to neurosurgery in 2017. Harris, who was fit and a regular swimmer, only received a scan when he contacted the department again in 2019.
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Eventually Harris, who had worked as a gardener, delivery driver and massage therapist, was referred to neurosurgery early last year suffering with acute pain. He had to wait weeks to be seen, despite repeatedly pleading with his consultant in emails complaining of “red-hot poker pain” that was “scaring me to death”. There were yet further delays in arranging MRI scans, the review found.
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Months later, the tumour was assessed to be cancerous and inoperable. Harris was discharged to hospice care and died a few weeks later.
Sussex police have confirmed to Harris’s family that his death is being investigated as possible corporate manslaughter, as part of its expanding Operation Bramber investigation.
Police documents seen by the Guardian show that more than 90 deaths in the general surgery and neurosurgery departments are being reviewed as possible manslaughter. Detectives and a clinical panel are examining alleged medical negligence and cover-ups between 2015 and 2021. The allegations were first made by two internal whistleblowers: Krishna Singh, a consultant surgeon, and Mansoor Foroughi, a consultant neurosurgeon, who lost their jobs after raising concerns.
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Barrage of bill hikes sees the cost-of-living crisis bite
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/barrage-of-bill-hikes-sees-the-cost-of-living-crisis-bite
Government must take action, union warns: ‘We can’t go on with billionaires getting ever richer whilst working people suffer’
CASH-STRAPPED Britons will be squeezed for an extra £66 every month from April as a barrage of bill hikes sees the cost-of-living crisis bite.
Millions of hard-up households, already paying what MPs said were “world-beatingly” high bills, will be forced to shell out even more for essentials from Tuesday.
GMB union urged ministers to take bold steps to help working people facing across-the-board price rises for energy, water, council tax, internet, road tax and the TV licence.
“Households have been struggling with the cost-of-living crisis for several years now,” said the union’s national secretary Andy Prendergast. “This latest set of increases shows there still isn’t any light at the end of the tunnel.
“The government must take bold steps to put money in people’s pockets,” he thundered. “We can’t go on with billionaires getting ever richer whilst working people suffer.”
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Cat Hobbs, founder and director of public service campaign group We Own It, said: “With bill hikes across many essential services this spring, it looks like the cost-of-living crisis is sadly here to stay.
“The word ‘essential’ is important here. Heat, shelter, water — these are all things that we need to survive and none of them are getting cheaper.
“Water is the poster-child for the failed privatisation experiment, with companies on the brink of collapse scrambling for more of our money.
“Companies that have racked up huge debts to pay dividends are now running out of other people’s cash.
“Decades of underinvestment has killed our rivers and put the whole water network at risk.
“Modern, publicly owned services must be the goal for any progressive government.”
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/barrage-of-bill-hikes-sees-the-cost-of-living-crisis-bite
What Disability Benefit Cuts Reveal About Labour’s Grasp of Economics
Original article by Phil McDuff at https://novaramedia.com/2025/03/20/what-disability-benefit-cuts-reveal-about-labours-grasp-of-economics/
The angry volcano demands more human sacrifice.
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Austerity was a monstrous scam – a stitch up between the ruling elite and the media and think tank class to sell a decade of outright fraud and disaster capitalism as a sober but necessary correction from the excesses of Tony Blair. It was appalling and evil – but at least enough of them knew it was all a racket.
Reeves and Starmer are altogether different beasts. They’re true believers. The economy really doesn’t want those libraries in Wolverhampton!
It’s as if the economy is an angry volcano god that demands constant ritual sacrifices of poor and disabled people. Past rulers might have made up those stories so as to avoid hard questions such as “why do you get to have the big gold hat while I have to muck out this goat shed?” but we’re now at the stage where the people in charge really, truly believe that the volcano won’t erupt if we just throw enough people into it.
And, unfortunately, their response to the volcano’s stubborn insistence on erupting despite the rain of bodies is “more human sacrifice! The economy is still mad at us!”
Reeves seems to believe her powerful invocations of “growth, growth, growth” aren’t stirring the economy god into action because poor and disabled people are blocking its ears. “You’re not working hard enough! You’re not putting in enough effort! If you were, this would be working! It can’t be because my ideas are trash! Into the volcano with you!”
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Original article by Phil McDuff at https://novaramedia.com/2025/03/20/what-disability-benefit-cuts-reveal-about-labours-grasp-of-economics/
Our research shows the harm the two-child limit on benefits is doing. Only scrapping it can end this
Kate Andersen, University of York and Kitty Stewart, London School of Economics and Political Science
Since the UK Labour government took office in summer 2024, calls have intensified to scrap both the “two-child limit” – which restricts support for children through universal credit to two children – and the overall benefit cap. With Chancellor Rachel Reeves resisting this pressure as she tries to manage deteriorating public finances, ways of tweaking the two-child limit policy have been proposed.
But as researchers of child poverty, we have no doubt that the best place to start reducing the high and rising numbers of children growing up in poverty in Britain today is by fully abolishing the two-child limit and the benefit cap.
We argue that both policies are astoundingly unfair. As our four-year research programme has documented, both are causing wide-ranging harm to children. They restrict children’s everyday experiences and damage their ability to thrive – which in the long run affects everyone in the UK.
Children live in poverty because their families don’t have an adequate income. This is partly a simple question of maths: wages don’t adjust when there are more mouths to feed. It’s also partly because things happen unexpectedly for some families – job loss, disability, relationship breakdown – leaving them needing extra support for a period of time.
Countries across Europe respond to these dual challenges by providing financial support that adjusts to family needs. Until recently, the UK did too. Indeed, the UK welfare state was one of the pioneers of “family allowances” in the post-war period.
But since 2017, the UK has reformed the system so that in families with three or more children, the support on offer when things go wrong deliberately and explicitly falls far short of what is needed. The UK’s two-child limit, an approach that differs to other countries in Europe, restricts means-tested support to two children in a family only. It bakes child poverty into the fibre of the UK.
Its sister policy, the benefit cap, limits the maximum benefit amount available to households without adults in work. This removes further help from some of the most vulnerable.
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Struggling to get by
The parents we spoke to frequently talked of difficulties in affording basic necessities for their children, including clothes and food. Many parents had resorted to using foodbanks or cut back on food spending.
The material impacts also affected children’s education and their social and emotional wellbeing. Jessica is a single mum of four. Her business went under during the pandemic and her partner left the household, leaving her affected by both the two-child limit and the benefit cap.
When a hole appeared in Jessica’s daughter’s school shoes, there was no money to replace them straight away. Her daughter went to school wearing trainers and was put in isolation for not adhering to the dress code. Jessica explained:
I got the phone call to say she had to go into isolation and, and things and I just said, “I’m not the type of person that just has £20 sat in the bank” … it was kind of a bit public shaming her really, taking her away and putting her in isolation.
Our interviews also showed that, despite parents’ best efforts to shield them, children are often aware of household financial hardship and in turn try to protect their parents. Christina, a mum of three affected by the two-child limit, said of her middle child:
He won’t say he needs new clothes and he won’t say his shoes don’t fit anymore … I think he’s got it into his head now that we can’t go out and spend or he can’t ask, and I feel so bad for that.
Our research also documents the importance of abolishing the benefit cap alongside the two-child limit. Otherwise, some families affected by the two-child limit won’t see much financial gain, while others will be newly pushed into the benefit cap.
Complete removal
Suggested alternatives to the full abolition of the two child limit include a “three-child limit”, or an exemption for children under five. These options would undoubtedly help some families, but would leave many of those in the greatest need still struggling.
Pound for pound, a three-child limit is less effective at reducing poverty than simple abolition, precisely because it is less well targeted on those in deepest poverty. An exemption for under fives would create a new cliff edge, removing significant support on a child’s fifth birthday, even though we know that the costs of children rise as children get older.
Further, these approaches continue to enforce a separation between what a family needs and its entitlement to support, and therefore will continue to embed child poverty as an institutional feature of our social security system. Children’s life chances will continue to be circumscribed by the number of siblings they have. Given what we know about the long-term costs of child poverty for society, these are short-sighted ways to save money today.
It is very encouraging that the government has committed to a child poverty strategy, and that the prime minister has said he will be “laser focused” on tackling child poverty.
But, as we wait for the strategy to be published, the number of children harmed by the two-child limit rises daily. Nearly two-in-five larger families are now affected and this is predicted to rise to 61% of larger families by the time the two-child limit has full coverage.
If the child poverty strategy is to have real impact, its starting point is straightforward: both the two-child limit and the benefit cap need to go, and urgently, before more damage is done to children’s lives.
Kate Andersen, Research Fellow, School for Business and Society, University of York and Kitty Stewart, Professor, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.