… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: NHS

  • NHS cancer patients denied life-saving drugs due to Brexit costs, report finds

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    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/20/nhs-cancer-patients-denied-life-saving-drugs-due-to-brexit-costs-report-finds

    Brexit has ‘damaged the practical ability’ of doctors to offer NHS patients life-saving new drugs via international trials, according to the 54-page report. Photograph: Dmitrii Dikushin/Alamy

    Guardian Exclusive: Britons found to have ‘lost out’ while rest of Europe benefits from golden age of research and treatments

    British cancer patients are being denied life-saving drugs and trials of revolutionary treatments are being derailed by the red tape and extra costs brought on by Brexit, a leaked report warns.

    Soaring numbers are being diagnosed with the disease amid a growing and ageing population, improved diagnosis initiatives and wider public awareness – making global collaborations to find new medicines essential.

    But five years after the UK’s exit from the EU, the most comprehensive analysis of its kind concludes that while patients across Europe are benefiting from a golden age of pioneering research and novel treatments, Britons with cancer have “lost out” thanks to rising prices and red tape.

    Brexit has “damaged the practical ability” of doctors to offer NHS patients life-saving new drugs via international clinical trials, according to the 54-page report obtained by the Guardian.

    In some cases, the cost of importing new cancer drugs for Britons has nearly quadrupled as a result of post-Brexit red tape. Some trials have had shipping costs alone increase to 10 times since Brexit.

    The extra rules and costs have had a “significant negative impact” on UK cancer research, creating “new barriers” that are “holding back life-saving research” for Britons, the report says.

    …

    Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/20/nhs-cancer-patients-denied-life-saving-drugs-due-to-brexit-costs-report-finds

  • ‘Farage is just a pound shop Trump’

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/farage-is-just-a-pound-shop-trump

    Reform UK leader Nigel Farage poses outside The Waterford Lodge, Morpeth, in Northumberland, whilst on the local election campaign trail, April 15, 2025

    National Education Union vows to fight Reform UK’s election candidates and racist policies

    REFORM UK is a racist and far-right political party led by a “pound shop Donald Trump,” thundered National Education Union (NEU) general secretary Daniel Kebede today at the annual conference of Britain’s largest teaching union.

    Delegates donning “Stop Racist Reform UK” T-shirts voted to use the union’s political fund to campaign against Reform election candidates with racist policies and campaigns.

    Passed weeks before next month’s local elections, the motion highlighted Reform’s campaigns against migrants, denouncing it as among the organisations seeking to build “on the despair, poverty and alienation in our society by scapegoating refugees, asylum-seekers, Muslims, Jews and others who do not fit their beliefs.”

    Speaking after the debate, Mr Kebede said that Reform is a right-wing populist organisation whose denials of racism don’t ring true with how they “seem to be attracting an awful lot of former BNP activists.”

    “Nigel Farage has clearly said that he would like to see private healthcare,” the union leader said, before raising concerns over what a party that has “declared war on the teaching profession” would do to education.

    “He is friends with [US President] Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Mr Kebede continued. “Musk wants to ‘gamify’ education and Trump has just abolished the US Department for Education,” he said.

    “We will absolutely be using our political fund to campaign against candidates as appropriate.”

    Asked what he thought was behind Mr Farage recently vowing to “wage war” on the NEU, he added: “It’s just nonsense straight out of the Trump playbook.

    …

    Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/farage-is-just-a-pound-shop-trump

    Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
    Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
    Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes' concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country's economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
    Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.

  • Campaigners demand full nationalisation of British Steel after government seizes control of Scunthorpe plant

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/campaigners-demand-full-nationalisation-british-steel-after-government-seizes-control

    A general view of British Steel in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, April 12, 2025

    LABOUR has been urged to catch up with public support for nationalising services “just as strategically important” as British Steel.

    Campaigners and unions have continued to call for the full nationalisation of the company after the government passed an emergency law on Saturday to seize control of its Scunthorpe plant.

    The legislation was passed in a single day, empowering ministers to save the last plant making “virgin steel” direct from raw materials from imminent closure, as well as thousands of jobs.

    But Labour’s action was likened to an expensive public bailout today amid growing calls for the government to stop the private sector from running other services into the ground.

    We Own It founder and director Cat Hobbs said: “The government has sprung into action to protect British Steel as a strategically important industry, with nationalisation on the table.

    “In 2020, Keir Starmer promised public ownership of rail, mail, energy and water — as well as ending outsourcing in our NHS and local government.

    “These public services are just as strategically important as steel, as drivers of economic and social development.

    “Since Thatcher’s sell off, many of our key public services have been handed over to foreign states, offshore funds and billionaires.

    “If Starmer is looking to take back control of our economy, this would be a good place to start.

    “The UK public overwhelmingly supports public ownership and it’s high time our government caught up.”

    …

    Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/campaigners-demand-full-nationalisation-british-steel-after-government-seizes-control

  • Thoughts of the Day 14 April 2025 2/2 UK’s Notional Health Service

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    NHS emblem
    Notional Health System emblem

    I’m ill again with overwhelming fatigue which explains in part why I’ve been neglecting this blog. It could be a symptom of something far more serious of course and I wouldn’t be surprised that it is. The UK’s NHS is reduced to little more than a notion where you have to ring at certain times of the day to be ignored by a health-ignorant de-skilled workforce in an attempt to have a 5-minute telephone conversation with and arrogant, dismissive GP a fortnight later.

    Under Wes Streeting’s proposals you will be able to discuss your health with a health-ignorant de-skilled NHS employee at your home. There are already health-ignorant people I can discuss it with – neighbours, delivery drivers, postpeople, refuse workers. I can even tell random people in the street or shopworkers.

  • ‘These cuts will place yet more strain on an NHS already creaking at the seams’

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/these-cuts-will-place-yet-more-strain-on-an-nhs-already-creaking-at-the-seams

    (left to right) Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Dr James Marsh, Group Deputy CEO for Epsom and St Helier Hospitals, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and NHS CEO Amanda Pritchard during a visit to Elective Orthopaedic Centre in Epsom, Surrey, January 6, 2025

    Labour warned that workers expect better as anger mounts over welfare cuts and public-sector pay

    WORKERS expect better, Labour has been warned by the country’s biggest trade union as anger mounts over cruel welfare cuts and public-sector pay.

    Protests met Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s address to Unison health conference in Liverpool yesterday, following a sharp rebuke to the government from its general secretary Christina McAnea on Tuesday.

    Ms McAnea had thanked the government for taking steps to improve workers’ conditions through the upcoming Employment Rights Bill.

    But she said that some of Labour’s decisions, such as stopping winter fuel payments and inflicting “heartless” cuts to welfare, had left her “baffled and speechless.”

    “These cuts will place yet more strain on an NHS already creaking at the seams,” she warned.

    “They’re counter-productive, will cost more in the long run and are morally wrong.

    “The best way to turn the NHS around is by focusing on the workforce.

    “There’s simply no route to fixing the NHS that doesn’t first involve sorting health workers’ pay,” which declined in real terms for over a decade under the Tories.

    She called Labour’s 2.8 per cent pay rise for workers “ludicrous,” adding that it “won’t encourage experienced staff to stay in the NHS, nor will it be enough to persuade new recruits to join.”

    …

    Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/these-cuts-will-place-yet-more-strain-on-an-nhs-already-creaking-at-the-seams

    Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.
    Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.