Health workers form a blockade in Soho Square during a protest outside the London headquarters of US tech giant Palantir, which was awarded a £330 million contract by NHS England last month to create a new data management system called the Federated Data Platform, December 21, 2023
THE NHS is set to probe potential contract breaches by US spy tech firm Palantir after the company plotted an influencer marketing campaign to shut down criticism from campaigners.
Palantir failed to seek prior approval from NHS England for a marketing campaign promoting its £330 million contract to run a data platform for the health service.
The contract sparked fierce criticism from campaigners who cited privacy concerns over sharing medical data with the secretive firm, which was first funded by the CIA.
According to leaked emails, Palantir hired PR agency Topham Guerin, which previously ran campaigns for the Conservative Party, and marketing agency Disrupt, to approach influencers.
The brief outlined a campaign to “clear up misinformation relating to some recent data privacy concerns that were shared in the UK press.”
It went on to accuse The Good Law Project, which flagged concerns over safeguarding data, of “spreading fear.”
If it wins the next general election in the UK, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party could try to fix the damage inflicted on the National Health Service by years of Tory austerity. But Labour seems set on further privatizing the NHS.
Everywhere you look in the health service, the signs of thirteen years of austerity and willful Tory neglect are apparent. The Tories have, throughout their time in government, allowed the National Health Service (NHS) to go to rack and ruin, sending staff morale crashing through the floor and putting patients’ lives at risk.
The waiting list for surgery or specialist clinical care — partly a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic but exacerbated by years of chronic underfunding — stands at a record high of 7.22 million. Millions of patients, meanwhile, are struggling to get general practitioner (GP) appointments due to the immense pressures on NHS primary care.
Ambulance waiting times are alarmingly long: in December, response times in England were the worst on record, while the number of patients waiting twelve hours or more to be admitted to accidents and emergency department (A&E) also hit a new all-time high. NHS dentistry, in addition, is in a state of almost-total collapse.
Both opinion polls and the recent local elections in England indicate that the Tories are on track to lose the next general election. While the differences between Keir Starmer’s Labour and Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are narrowing all the time, it might at least be expected that the Labour Party would repair the worst of the damage done since 2010. The NHS remains the great survivor of postwar social democracy. But statements from the Labour front bench suggest otherwise.
Not for the first time, Starmer and Labour claim local elections will affect national policies
Keir Starmer has suffered the indignity of corrective action by Twitter after he posted a claim that votes in the local elections next month will affect the NHS.
Starmer claimed that voting for Labour would lead to ‘an NHS that treats patients on time again’ – but of course, local government does not decide NHS policy, capacity or funding:
Starmer has defended Labour’s recent appalling campaign messages. Now a social media platform has had to attach information to his campaign claim to reduce the extent to which it misleads voters. The scandal comes on the same day news emerged that Starmer accepted corporate hospitality from a firm that had to pay out almost £11 million after installing Grenfell-like flammable cladding to an apartment block.
MORE than two-thirds of Brits think the NHS in underfunded, including a majority of Tory voters, a damning new poll published today reveals.
The Opinium survey — commissioned by Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) — shows 67 per cent of all voters and 58 per cent of Conservative supporters want austerity-hit health services to receive more cash.
Nearly seven in 10 of the 2,000 adults consulted think the NHS is performing badly, with 55 per cent blaming Downing Street for the deterioration in services, which have also been hit by national strikes since December over plummeting take-home pay and worsening patient safety.
Close to three-quarters — 72 per cent — want the health service to be a “fully or mostly public service,” the poll also shows.
It came ahead of what is expected to be a massive national demonstration in central London on Saturday, when the more than 50 organisations involved in the KONP-founded SOS NHS campaign will gather to demand better.
Email to CLPs warns them that any existing affiliations with groups campaigning for abortion rights, minority human rights, disarmament and a fully public NHS are cancelled
Image thanks to The Skwawkbox
The Labour party has banned local parties (CLPs) from affiliating with an array of groups supporting the human rights of ethnic minorities or campaigning for a public NHS, in yet another Stalinist move to limit members’ freedom of expression.
And local parties are being notified by email that any affiliations they already have in place are unilaterally cancelled – and that if a right-wing group is affiliated with the party nationally, they haveno say over whether that group affiliates with them locally.
One such email reads:
Organisations that are nationally affiliated to the party are eligible to affiliate to any CLP provided they pay the appropriate fee and the CLP cannot debate or decide on their affiliations.
…The following affiliations are therefore no longer valid and the CLP may not renew its affiliation without approval from the NEC. To do so would breach party rules. These are:
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stop the War Coalition, Republic, London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Jewish Voice for Labour, Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, All African Women’s Group, Health Campaigns Together, The Campaign against Climate Change Trades Union, Peace & Justice Project.
Yes, you read that right: a group campaigning for peace, human rights, women’s rights, disarmament and to protect the environment are not welcome in Keir Starmer’s Labour party and party member groups risk disciplinary action if they try to associate with them.
And of course, given recent appalling comments by the leadership and its agents, Jews who believe in the human rights of Palestinians are particularly unwelcome – and indeed are being disproportionately targeted by the regime in a campaign of blatant (but ignored by the media) antisemitism and discrimination.
