‘A blow to staff, patients, and local communities’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/blow-staff-patients-and-local-communities
A taped off section inside a school which has been affected with sub standard reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac)Campaigners dismayed as government plans to replace hospitals built with Raac delayed again
FURTHER delays in replacing hospitals built with Raac concrete are a “blow” to NHS staff, as campaigners wanted to prevent the “severe risk of collapsing floors and ceilings.”
The government’s spending watchdog announced today that a pledge to deal with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) in seven hospitals by 2030 would not be met.
A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) found that the infrastructure plans, drawn up by the previous Conservative government, would only be completed by 2032 and 2033.
Despite the new timeline, the NAO also claimed that some new building projects are already facing pressure to finish for their revised deadline.
The watchdog also said that by the end of 2025, works to alleviate the risks of Raac have already cost more than £500 million.
Campaigners and unions hit back, warning that longer delays will mean “greater risks” for patients and NHS staff, and will mean “higher costs” to fix the issues plaguing NHS hospitals.
Raac is a lightweight material which was used widely in the 1960s and ’80s to build public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
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Continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/blow-staff-patients-and-local-communities
Morning Star Editorial: Jenrick’s sacking highlights hard-right menace
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jenricks-sacking-highlights-hard-right-menace
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick delivers a speech during the Conservative Party Conference at the Manchester Central Convention Complex, October 7, 2025THE dramatic dismissal of Robert Jenrick from his post on the Tory front bench and from the party itself is a landmark in the recalibration and reorganisation of the right in British politics.
It points, far more than the numerous other high-profile defections from the Conservatives to Reform, towards a concentration of significant political forces behind an exceptionally authoritarian and chauvinistic variant of neoliberalism.
The shadow justice secretary may have jumped slightly before he was ready because of Kemi Badenoch’s decisive move but his rightward trajectory was long headed towards destination Farage. The discovery of his draft resignation letter appears to have precipitated her dismissal of what had become a very troublesome princeling.
Jenrick’s growing alignment with Nigel Farage indicates first, that Reform is increasingly seen as the only viable game in town for the hard right and, second, that the party is intensifying its plans to form a government after the next general election.
To plausibly offer itself as a ruling party, Reform needs more experienced politicians who could step into ministerial office. Jenrick, a cynical and unscrupulous opportunist, fits that bill.
Originally a modestly liberal “Cameron Conservative” and a Remainer, he has rebranded himself as an authoritarian xenophobe.
Since losing the 2024 Tory leadership election to Badenoch, his most notable political interventions have been to bemoan the lack of “white faces” he saw during a brief visit to the Handsworth district of Birmingham, and a Conservative conference call for the wholesale sacking of judges he dislikes, to be replaced by those he prefers.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jenricks-sacking-highlights-hard-right-menace
Patients ‘would rather risk dying at home than go through torture’ of corridor care
A general view of staff on a NHS hospital wardNurses share harrowing accounts of a ‘broken system’
NURSES have shared harrowing accounts of a “broken system” of corridor care that “tortures” patients, with people left in chairs for days and one patient choking to death, unnoticed.
Publishing new findings on the practice today, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warned that collapsing NHS care standards are pushing staff morale “past the point of no return.”
The report comes a year after a previous damning investigation by the union into corridor care.
RCN contacted thousands of nurses who contributed to last year’s report to assess whether corridor care was still being used and its impact.
Responses from 436 nurses showed the practice remains widespread.
Nurses described having to hold up white sheets to protect patient dignity while performing intimate procedures.
At one hospital, an elderly patient was forced to eat in a corridor beside someone who was vomiting.
A nurse working in the NHS in south-west England said patients felt “deeply embarrassed, objectified, judged, uncared for” and like “a burden on a broken system.”
They are often “wishing they had never bothered to come in and would rather have taken the risk of dying at home than go through the torture,” the nurse said.
“Because that’s what we subject them to, a type of torture.”
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/patients-would-rather-risk-dying-home-go-through-torture-corridor-care
US aggression, UK support: The ‘special relationship’
https://www.declassifieduk.org/us-aggression-uk-support-the-special-relationship/
From Iran to Libya, from Panama to Venezuela, there is a history of the UK supporting illegal US military interventions
Forty years ago, US warplanes bombed Libya, attempting to assassinate its leader Muammar Gaddafi. Failing in that task, they managed to kill dozens of civilians in Tripoli, Libya’s capital.
The attacks, which were in response to the bombing of a Berlin nightclub blamed on Gaddafi, were strongly supported by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Indeed, she allowed some of the US jets to take off from bases in Britain.
In the face of widespread public opposition to the US raid, a defiant Thatcher told parliament it was “a necessary and proportionate response to a clear pattern of Libyan terrorism” and to “uphold international law”.
However, the UN General Assembly, and most world opinion, condemned the attack as a violation of international law.
But for the British prime minister: “The United States has stood by us in times of need, as we have stood by her. To refuse their request for the use of bases here would have been to abandon our responsibilities as an ally and to weaken the fight against terrorism.”
Fast forward two decades, and we find ourselves in a not dissimilar situation over US attacks on Venezuela.
UK ministers give their backing to the kidnapping of a foreign head of state amidst a military intervention, condemned in the wider world but supported in Whitehall because of the so-called “special relationship”.
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How Britain helped Trump destabilise Venezuela
Article continues at https://www.declassifieduk.org/us-aggression-uk-support-the-special-relationship/
