Recent articles about UK politics, some about the Catholic Church policy of protecting paedos and some about Edward Snowden

Socialist Party :: Who’s robbing our NHS?

The National Health Service is under attack as never before. In this feature, a GP from north-west England looks at the effect of a huge government push for privatisation while nurse Claire Job looks at the predatory actions of the pharmaceutical industry.

NHS watchdog says Virgin Care-run clinic put patients at risk | Society | The Guardian

The NHS watchdog has accused a privately run urgent care centre of putting patients’ health at risk by using receptionists with minimal medical training to assess how unwell arrivals were.

A Care Quality Commission (CQC) report has criticised the operation of the urgent care centre at Croydon hospital in south London, which is run by Virgin Care. CQC inspectors found the centre was in breach of four basic standards of care and have told Virgin Care to outline by next week the remedial action it is taking.

The CQC’s report, based on inspections of the centre last July and September, concluded that “care and treatment was not planned and delivered in a way that was intended to ensure people’s safety and welfare”.

38 Degrees interview: Meet British politics’ spammer-in-chief

MPs have come to despise 38 Degrees for clogging up their inboxes with emails from constituents. They need to get used to it – because this model of campaigning-by-email-bombardment isn’t going away.

For an organisation only set up in 2009, 38 Degrees has notched up its fair share of victories. It forced the coalition government’s first big U-turn, on the forests sell-off. It called for more free school meals – and Nick Clegg duly announced they were being rolled out for all infants. It raised enough cash to pay for the judicial review which successfully challenged health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s plans to shut down key services at Lewisham hospital.

“It’s not often you can say ‘I took the government to court and won’, but that’s what thousands of 38 Degrees members could say last year,” its executive director David Babbs tells me. We’re seated at a meeting table in the middle of the 38 Degrees office in central London. From here, the small team of around 15 staff coordinate the activities of its 2.2 million members. Compare that to the 193,000 members of the Labour party – and the 130,000 Tory party members – and you get a sense of the scale of the operation.

Vatican ‘kept code of silence’ on paedophile priests, claims UN report – World Politics – World – The Independent

Snowden leak: GCHQ DDoSed chatrooms of Anonymous, LulzSec • The Register

Pulling power: Wendi Deng reportedly wrote a letter praising Tony Blair’s body – but she’d hardly be the first to go weak at the knees – UK Politics – UK – The Independent

Strangely written from the deluded and divorced from reality perspective of Tony Blair.