… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: nhs

  • The NHS are carp

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    NHS emblem
    NHS emblem

    Go to any hospital and there are signs and posters everywhere “NHS staff will not tolerate abuse”. They can’t half give it out though. NHS staff won’t tolerate abuse … but they’ll abuse you as much as you like and expect you to be grateful for it.

    The NHS is not wonderful in everything they do despite expecting you to sing their praises at every opportunity. Sometimes they’re totally carp just like the rest of us really I suppose. They expect you to take their abuse and be grateful for it. Cnuts, maybe on a different scale but cnuts the same.

    ed: Very recently I’ve learned that you can’t say Can you do this dressing again because it’s carp, not doing what it’s supposed to and I’ve got to keep it on for 3 weeks not the 1 week the guy who did it said? you can’t say that because that’s criticising a collegue of theirs – that he did a crap dressing.

    You can’t say I object to the guy lying to me. He told me it was a bone in my thumb not a bone in my wrist. I’ve got a Masters Degree FFS, brain the size of a planet. Why are you treating me like a child? Hiding the truth from me? I didn’t get to say that actually.

    So what happens is they just sit you down waiting for absolutely as long as they can. I decided at 90 minutes that I’d had enough. I’ve had it before, they waste as much of your time as they possibly can. Can’t see how this abuse sits with their Safeguarding Duty actually, perhaps they just conveniently ignore that.

    Looks like I’ve done it now. NHS cnuts, I withdraw consent. I refuse to be abused by you.

  • More than 3,000 people a day treated in corridors in June as summer strains NHS

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/more-3000-people-day-treated-corridors-june-summer-strains-nhs

     Health Secretary James Murray during a visit to Watford General Hospital in Hertfordshire, July 9, 2026

    …

    More than 3,181 patients were treated in corridors in June, with 2,432 patients in A&E and 749 in other wards, as officials said summer now puts as much strain on the service as winter.

    NHS England recorded the increase from May, which saw 2,900 patients receiving at least 45 minutes of care in corridors.

    Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) urged the likely next PM, Mr Burnham, to “grasp the seriousness” of the issue, which they say leads to 300 avoidable deaths every week and an “intense mental health toll and burnout of NHS staff.”

    Its co-chair Dr Tony O’Sullivan told the Morning Star: “This year-round level of pressure on patients and staff is dangerous, cruel and unsustainable.

    “Only investment in public health services and staff will return the NHS to a safe and caring service for the population — and the economy.”

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/more-3000-people-day-treated-corridors-june-summer-strains-nhs

  • Morning Star Editorial: Why Burnham needs pressing on the Palantir problem

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/why-burnham-needs-pressing-palantir-problem

     NHS staff blockade the entrance to NHS England’s headquarters in central London demanding the cancellation of its contract with Palantir, which supplies advanced technology to Israel’s military, April 3, 2024

    ANDY BURNHAM is not “minded” to grant contracts to CIA-linked tech firm Palantir, we learn from Westminster briefings this week.

    The Makerfield MP’s impending coronation leaves us in a strange transitional period where his reported preferences are the stuff of gossip, rather than policies being demanded as the price of support. He has delivered a pitch to the nation of sorts: but no questions were taken, and pinning the PM-to-be down is much harder in the absence of a leadership contest.

    …

    [T]reating Burnham’s premiership as a foregone conclusion allows him to be troublingly vague.

    His allies can reassure the left that he isn’t keen on Palantir, citing his record as Manchester mayor in which role he never awarded it a contract; he himself avoids any specific commitments either on future contracts or — significantly — existing ones.

    …

    Thiel is a plutocrat as sinister as Elon Musk, with whom he shares an upbringing in apartheid South Africa: an advocate of “post-democracy,” arguing that democracy is incompatible with human (by which he largely means corporate) freedom and, also like Musk, pitching his own tech companies as future mechanisms of rule.

    Palantir’s facilitation of horrific racist policing methods in the US, and still more horrific war crimes by the Israeli military, is well known but cancelling its contracts is not simply a question of ethics.

    We have to question the idea that companies as powerful as this provide services on a politically neutral basis, given their founders are explicitly hostile to public services as such.

    …

    It’s good that Burnham is not “minded” to favour Palantir, but a comprehensive rejection of outsourcing policies which now threaten democracy itself is what’s required.

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/why-burnham-needs-pressing-palantir-problem

    dizzy: Reading the whole Editorial is recommended.

    There are competing narratives on Burnham’s approach to Palantir. Apart from or possibly above anything else, reports that Palantir’s system has apalling performance even after optimisation should be adequate and sufficient to abandon Palantir in the NHS.

    Labour leadership hopeful Wes Streeting – who recently resigned as health secretary – has said that Palantir is “absolutely critical to the future of the NHS.”

    But a briefing prepared for NHS England senior leaders in February said that Palantir’s NHS platform is eight to ten times slower at analysing data than the current NHS tool in use.

    “Processing time is reported as taking 4-5 minutes compared to 30 seconds [in the current system]” the briefing states, even after making “optimisation” changes to speed it up.

  • Get Palantir out of our NHS, protesters demand

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/get-palantir-out-our-nhs-protesters-demand

     Campaigners rally against Palantir. Photo: Neil Terry Photography

    DOZENS of campaigners rallied outside the year’s biggest NHS conference today to demand health chiefs and the government pull the plug on US surveillance tech firm Palantir.

    The NHSConfedExpo, organised by the NHS Alliance, brings together health policy-makers from around the country, but has in recent times been a target for protest by those concerned at the encroachment of the US-based data analytics firm on the service.

    Palantir has been implicated in genocide as a supplier of AI technologies for battlefield decision-making and the creation of target lists to the IDF as it set about its slaughter of over 75,000 civilians, an estimated 22,000 of them children, and as many as 1,700 health workers in Gaza.

    Speakers at the rally included representatives of Unison, Amnesty International, the Good Law Project, Young Struggle Manchester, and Angela, who did not give her surname, from local mental health campaign CHARM, which last year joined demands for Manchester’s Integrated Joint Board to drop the firm.

    “As an organisation of service users, survivors, carers, trade unionists and allies, we believe this is about far more than technology,” she said.

    “It’s about trust. That is not a minor issue. In mental healthcare, trust can be lifesaving. 

    “Healthcare data should be protected by organisations that reflect the stated values of the NHS. These values include care, transparency, accountability and respect for human rights. 

    …

    Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/get-palantir-out-our-nhs-protesters-demand

  • Palantir to sue Sadiq Khan over blocked £50m Met police contract

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    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/09/palantir-sue-khan-blocked-met-contract

    Sadiq Khan had blocked the deal and suggested Palantir had been the only contender for the Met’s AI contract. Photograph: Michael Bowles/Shutterstock

    US spy-tech company to challenge London mayor’s intervention after he raised concerns over breach of procurement rules

    Palantir intends to sue the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, after he blocked a contract between the US spy-tech firm and the Metropolitan police.

    The Met had planned to use Palantir’s software to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, until Khan intervened in late May, sparking a row between the UK’s largest police force and the mayor’s office.

    Khan said there had been a breach of procurement rules in the contract and suggested Palantir had been the only contender.

    Now the Times has reported that Palantir’s lawyers have written to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime saying they intend to challenge the decision in court. Khan’s office confirmed they had received the letter. Palantir declined to comment for this article.

    A spokesperson for Khan’s office said: “The Met did not present its procurement strategy as required and the Met only fully engaged with one potential supplier: Palantir.”

    …

    On Tuesday morning, the technology secretary, Liz Kendall, confirmed the government was conducting a full review of the NHS contract with Palantir, assessing whether to extend the £330m deal or activate a break clause that would allow it to stop using the company’s services in early 2027.

    Last week, a parliamentary committee urged the government to trigger a break, calling Palantir’s presence an “unacceptable point of weakness” in a public sector increasingly reliant on a handful of US tech firms.

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/09/palantir-sue-khan-blocked-met-contract