The emergency department at Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, Smethwick, January 8, 2025
Royal College of Emergency Medicine says advertisement is ‘normalising’ patients being treated in the corridors
A LONDON hospital has advertising for “corridor care” nurses because so many A&E patients are being cared for while waiting for beds or treatment.
The 12-hour shifts were advertised by Whittington hospital in north London.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said the advertisement indicated the “normalising” of patients being treated in the corridors of hospital A&E departments.
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Retired paediatrician Dr John Puntis, co-chair of campaign group Keep Our NHS Public, said: “There can be no bleaker illustration of the current state of the NHS than ‘care’ delivered in corridors.
“Winter pressures on an already overstretched service were entirely predictable.
“Six months in power and Labour has done nothing pro-active to alleviate this situation.”
He accused the government of instead “throwing money at the private sector.”
As the government unveils its plans for NHS patients to be treated privately in a bid to cut the waiting list backlog, former Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn says this administration is repeating the mistakes of the last
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During the general election, I stood on a platform that pledged to defend a fully public, fully funded healthcare system. We knew Labour’s decision to drop its previously held manifesto promise that “the NHS is not for sale” was no accident. We said the future of our NHS was on the line – and we were right.
This week, the government announced that private operators will receive an extra £2.5bn a year in government funding. Under their plans, the role of the private sector in providing outpatient appointments will rise by 20 per cent. Meanwhile, the secretary of state for health, Wes Streeting, refuses to rule out the involvement of the private sector in a reformed care service – a refusal he will no doubt maintain for the next four years until elderly and disabled people are finally allowed to hear his plans.
To the prime minister and health secretary, welcoming privatisation is proof of their commitment to pragmatism. “We will not let ideology… stand in the way.” To anyone who knows the reality of privatisation, their dogmatic refusal to look at the evidence is the very definition of ideology itself.
A privatised health service leads to worse quality care, higher mortality rates and a reduction in staffing. Privatisation has even been linked to higher rates of patient infections, in part because cleaning staff are typically the first to be cut in the name of efficiency. There is only one beneficiary of privatisation: investors and shareholders making money out of people’s ill health.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting meeting staff during a visit to London Ambulance Service headquarters in south London, December 9, 2024
Campaigners warn Labour’s ‘pro-business approach to data’ has ‘potential for further loss of public trust’ in the NHS
HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting’s plans to sell GP data to the private sector “make no sense,” warned experts raising fresh privacy concerns yesterday.
Campaigners also warned Labour’s “pro-business approach to data” had the potential for further loss of public trust in the health service.
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Mr Streeting in October said that data “is the future of the NHS” and Britain “could lead the world in medical research.”
He plans to create a “single access system” for information from GP surgeries, hospitals and other care settings after NHS England awarded a controversial £330 million contract to US spy tech giant Palantir in 2023 to develop a new platform.
Today Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr John Puntis said: “The Data Use and Access Bill currently going through Parliament illustrates Labour’s pro-business approach to data as a valuable resource, and highlights the potential for further loss of public trust.
“It aims to make data, including our personal heath data, widely available to public authorities and the private sector.
“The Secretary of State will be given power to erode safeguards over use of personal data for research.
“Labour intends to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses at the expense of safeguards for citizens.
“An alternative vision would include investment in a publicly owned national digital infrastructure aimed at storing and managing NHS data currently being processed through cloud computing services that are owned by large technology companies.
“There must be safeguards against the private sector gaining access to data for profit, and the public should be fully informed about the use of people’s health data and the right to protection and privacy.”
A spokesman for Momentum said: “Selling off patients’ data is no way to fix the NHS.
“We must fully renationalise our healthcare system and defend it from corporate interests, not welcome them.”
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
A woman named Mary holds a sign in support of Luigi Mangione outside the Criminal Court building in lower Manhattan as Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the United Healthcare CEO killing, waived extradition to New York on December 19, 2024. (Photo: Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)
To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized.
Early this month Luigi Mangione, 26, University of Pennsylvania graduate, allegedly gunned down CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, 50. The public response has been varied, with many supporting Mangione. Some fear the positive regard of Mangione is indicative of a shift into a new era where violence is glorified and humanity is lost. As a sociology professor who teaches Poverty, Wealth, and Privilege, I disagree. This failure of subsets of the public to broadly denounce the actions of Mangione does not herald a cultural shift in appreciation of violence.
Instead this unusual display of class consciousness reflects two things. First, the reaction is due to the shift in who bore the cost of violence. Class under-resourced; Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color; women; and queer and trans people are the normal recipients of societal violence. Wealthy, cishet, white men in positions of power are not. Wealthy, white communities are conditioned to expect protection, and the revocation of that sheltering is rare.
Second, the working classes are weary from surviving an unnecessarily violent and unjust society. We live amid staggering class, race, and gender-based stratification and life and death stakes everyday. The ruling class profits from our blood, sweat, and tears. And yet, when one of the elite passes, they want us to give them more. They ask us to give them our love. Yet, they remain calloused to our pain and ignore our pleas for fairness.
We, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth?
Recently, a magician performed at a kid’s birthday party. Magic tricks work through deception. A magician distracts the audience to hide what else they are doing. Similar dynamics play out in our public life. The wealth gap continues to grow, yet we voted in a billionaire to be president. The public is shamed for failing to appropriately sympathize with Brian Thompson and his family, yet everyday targeted attacks and systemic neglect accumulate to harm and render disposable historically and strategically marginalized communities, such as class under-resourced, BIPOC, women, and trans and queer people.
Let us stop this charade. Our healthcare system is not pro-health. The World Health Organization (WHO) names universal healthcare as a worldwide goal. The United States has not complied. Most Americans are insured through private companies. Many Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, they postpone receiving care, and are in medical debt. The healthcare system has practices, such as using AI to deny a high number of healthcare claims, which put profits over people. There is something deeply inhumane and harmful about this disregard for health in a healthcare system. It may not be illegal, but it is savage.
The elite and their apologists ask, “How could they not be appalled by Thompson’s murder?” Instead we, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth? Decades ago, Larry Summers, currently on the board of directors of OpenAI, famously wrote that people who produce less are more expendable. This classist ideology pervades our healthcare system.
To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized. A path forward that reforms a calloused healthcare system can provide benefits to all of us. Those among us who deeply mourn Brian’s death can take solace that it can impart a legacy of positive, sustainable, and overdue social change. Those among us who view Mangione’s action as predictable, if not understandable, can appreciate the same reform.
To be sure, there are people who claim that human fallibility is a predestined curse that we cannot overcome, that we are born sinners and that we cannot do better than prioritize greed over care of each other, even within our healthcare system. There will be those of us who feel that disproportionate wealth is a triumph and that our healthcare should reflect the position we hold in our socioeconomic system. However, 73 countries have universal healthcare, including China, Russia, Mexico and Canada. Us Americans are also worthy.
Wealthy and powerful people are the most protected against societal harms, and they also have disproportionate control over them. We need the CEOs, billionaires, and other power elites to do better. The system does not have a great way to hold those in charge accountable for bad behavior. Can they figure out a way to hold themselves accountable? Can they reorganize to prioritize care, a virtue, over greed, a vice, in our healthcare system? If they are immune to this self-correcting recovery, we need to organize around collective action, such as voting, for example for single-payer healthcare, because our lives depend on it. We don’t want anyone dying in the street. We also don’t want anyone dying or in pain due to a broken so-called healthcare system.
Thames Water, the UK’s largest such firm, is fighting for its survival after years of poor performance, fines and hefty dividend payouts Photograph: Gill Allen/REX/Shutterstock
Guardian Exclusive: UK’s biggest water company assessed risks before cutting back on cost of environmental work, investigation shows
Thames Water intentionally diverted millions of pounds pledged for environmental clean-ups towards other costs including bonuses and dividends, the Guardian can reveal.
The company, which serves more than 16 million customers, cut the funds after senior managers assessed the potential risks of such a move.
Discussions – held in secret – considered the risk of a public and regulatory backlash if it emerged that cash set aside for work such as cutting river pollution had been spent elsewhere.
This could be seen as abreach of the company’s licence commitments and leave it vulnerable to accusations it had broken the law, according to sources and material seen by the Guardian.
Thames Water continued to pay staff bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and also paid tens of millions in dividends as recently as March this year, while cutting back on its spending promises. The company did so despite public claims from its leaders that improvements to its environmental performance, including on pollution, were a priority.
Wildlife presenter Liz Bonnin and naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham join thousands of environmental campaigners from more than 130 organisations in a March for Clean Water on 3 November 2024 in London. Photograph: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures/Getty Images
