The Independent has an article today about concern that Neonicatinoid pesticides are damaging the bee population. It says that Prof. Robert Watson, chief scientific advisor at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has initiated an inquiry.
Growing concern about the new generation of pesticides used on 2.5 million acres of UK farmland has led one of the Government’s most senior scientific advisers to order a review of the evidence used to justify their safety.
There are mounting fears around the world that the growing use of “neonicotinoid” pesticides, which work by poisoning the nervous system of insects, could explain why bees and other pollinating insects are in such dramatic decline in Britain, Europe and the United States, where the insecticide is widely used.
The official British government position has been that the insecticide is safe when used correctly – but Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has now initiated his own inquiry, The Independent can reveal, because of concerns about the alleged effects on bees.
I would suggest that there is little doubt that Neonicotinoids are seriously killing honey bee populations. There is also the overlooked issue to human health. These pesticides are systemic meaning that the whole plant is affected. If bees are dying through contaminated nectar, us humans eat the whole fruit or vegetable and are at the very end of the food chain.
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Many are expected to participate in the TUC’s March for an Alternative demonstration against public spending cuts in London today. Protests in UK are not that different to recent protests in the Middle East. Protestors protest to demand changes in government policy & they are attacked by government agents overt and covert. In UK there is the difference that it is more hidden – oppression is done more through ideological control.
A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
Tens of thousands of people are in London demonstrating against government cuts to public spending. Around 4500 police are on duty to try to prevent trouble.
Up to a quarter of a million people are expected to join the march and rally against spending cuts.
It is the biggest union-organised event for over 20 years and the largest in the country since the anti-war march in 2003.
More than 1 million people visit A&E every year with a head injury, of whom about 135,000 have a serious problem. Treating such patients, and nursing them back to as close to full health as possible, is one of the NHS’s biggest challenges. Patients can receive care for many months, and permanent disability, rather than a full recovery, can be the outcome.
An network of brain injury rehabilitation units undertakes this slow, delicate work. London has five of them – three in the south of the capital and two in the north – but only until tomorrow. That is when one, the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit (BIRU), based at Edgware community hospital in north London, closes its doors.
BIRU has 15 beds, and patients stay for up to 18 weeks. During that time they receive therapy and support from a multi-disciplinary team of neuro-psychiatrists, neuro-psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, and specialist nurses.
Health secretary Andrew Lansley said that he does not accept that there has been a change in mood among health professionals and government ministers over his plans to reorganise the NHS.
In an interview with medical professionals’ network Doctors.net.uk, he rejected claims that doctors’ voting for a halt to the health bill at an emergency meeting of British Medical Association earlier this month represented a deterioration in support of his plans.
Lansley also said that by and large Liberal Democrats support the bill, but delegates had voted against the plans at its party’s spring conference because they didn’t agree with certain aspects of it. The main opposition had come from trade unions and the Labour party, he added.
ONE of the region’s longest serving nurses says she is joining thousands protesting against the cuts today because of her fears for the future of the NHS.
Cate Woolley-Brown, from Billy Row, near Crook, County Durham, has worked as a nurse in the NHS for 44 years.
She says she is joining today’s TUC-organised march against spending cuts in London because of the impact the cuts are having on the health service.
“I can honestly say that I am more worried than I have ever been about the future of the health service,” said Mrs Woolley-Brown, who works at Sedgefield Community Hospital, County Durham.
MC NxtGen’s Andrew Lansley rap. Certainly heartfelt with ageist insults.
NHS news is dominated by a forecast reduction in real-term’s financing of the NHS. It is expected that coalition imposed cuts generally will start to be experienced soon with the start of the new financial year. It is unlikely that the rich will be affected. We are most definitely not all in this together as – heir to the Osborne baronetcy – Chancellor Osborne claimed yesterday while presenting his budget. He’s taking the piss.
A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
A week today the cuts will start to bite. As the financial year ends, grants will run out, contracts will wind up, and charities and services will begin to shut their doors. After months of anxiety about the impact of the cuts, the consequences of the government’s rapid deficit reduction programme will begin to be real.
The Guardian gives a slice of what this will mean across the country, highlighting a cross-section of 50 services that will shrink or cease to exist from the end of this month. Most are unglamorous, obscure, unfeted projects, staffed by employees who are not very well paid, but hugely committed to what they do. All of these losses come as a result of the government’s decision to cut spending by £95bn over five years.
Their disappearance may not be noticed by anyone with a good income, in secure employment, in sound health, without caring responsibilities – anyone who does not look to the state for support with life’s problems. For the more vulnerable, the decision to close these bodies and cut these jobs will be sharply felt. They will be more acutely obvious beyond the south-east, in areas that are more dependent on government grants. Women, parents, carers, disabled people, teenagers and elderly people are likely to be the most affected.
Despite an increase in funding NHS Wiltshire has to make savings of £34.6m.
Its allocation of funding from the Government for 2011/12 is 2.2 per cent above the previous year but NHS Wiltshire is still paying off debt run up by its predecessor primary care trusts.
The PCT’s budget for 2011/12 is £656.2m. Inflation costs will amount to £17.2m.
The oracle has spoken. The key finding from the IFS’s traditional lunchtime briefing on the Budget is that the coalition is at risk of breaking its pledge to protect real-terms spending on the NHS. At the Spending Review, George Osborne announced that health spending would rise by 0.1 per cent a year, or 0.4 per cent across the economic period. But as the IFS slide below shows, higher inflation means that real-terms spending will now fall by 0.1 per cent over the next four years.
Based on current trends, spending will be frozen in 2011-12 and will fall by 0.1 per cent in 2012-13. Had it not been for lower-than-expected spending in 2010-11, the IFS points out, there would have actually been a small real-terms cut in 2011-12.
The coalition’s pledge to ring-fence the £99.5bn health budget had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with economics. During the Labour leadership election, Andy Burnham, then shadow health secretary, persuasively argued that it was wrong to spare the NHS from cuts. He pointed out: “The effect is that he [George Osborne] is damaging, in a serious way, the ability of other public services to cope: he will visit real damage on other services that are intimately linked to the NHS.” But Cameron refused to abandon what was a prime piece of detoxification.
The coalition is embroiled in a row over its health pledges after it emerged that the budget contained a cut in the NHS’s spending power of almost £1bn.
Labour accused ministers of reneging on their repeated promise to increase the NHS’s budget in real terms every year throughout this parliament.
Revised upward predictions of inflation in the budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility show that the NHS in England will undergo a cut of £1bn in its spending power by 2015. It also reveals that its budget will be cut in each of the next two financial years, alleged shadow health secretary John Healey.
NHS news summary: Yet more confirmation that the Health Bill will destroy the NHS, PM Cameron accused of hiding high satisfaction with the NHS and Unite accuses the Con government of not thinking through NHS reforms.
Conservative election poster 2010
A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
The Health and Social Care Bill amounts to the abolition of the English NHS as a universal, comprehensive, publicly accountable, tax funded service, free at the point of delivery, academics warn.
Professor Allyson Pollock and David Price, from the Centre for Health Sciences, Barts and The London School of Medicine, argue that the government’s duty to provide a comprehensive health service in England is set to be abolished.
They say that freedoms created under the new Bill will allow corporate commissioners and investors to contract out all NHS services to a range of private providers and redefine the range of NHS services available. They will also be free to charge for some elements that are currently NHS services and to create surpluses for staff and shareholders by under-spending the patient care budget, the authors say on bmj.com.
At today’s PMQs Paul Blomfield challenged the Prime Minister about the Department of Health’s decision not to publish research that it is has had since last autumn, and which shows the highest ever public satisfaction with the NHS. David Cameron refused to answer the question.
Paul Blomfield MP asked the Prime Minister:
“It was reported at the weekend that the Department of Health has failed to publish research, that it had commissioned and received last autumn, which showed the highest ever public satisfaction with the NHS. Will the Prime Minister urge the Secretary of State for Health to publish this research without further delay or, by not doing so, will he confirm that the BMA was right last week when it deplored “the government’s use of misleading and inaccurate information to denigrate the NHS, to justify the Health and Social Care Bill reforms”?
Speaking after PMQs Paul Blomfield MP said: “It’s not surprising that David Cameron refused to answer my question. The public is more satisfied with the NHS than ever before, which shows that the Tory plans to reorganise the NHS are completely ideologically-driven and not based on evidence. They are going to let private companies start running NHS services and create a two-tier system. The public do not support this and the Tory/Lib Dem government should think again and scrap their dangerous plans.”
The politics of vagueness haunts the legislation which will herald the biggest ever shake-up of the NHS, Unite, the largest union in the country, said today (Wednesday 23 March).
Unite, which has 100,000 members in the health service, is concerned that health secretary Andrew Lansley has not got a grip on the details of the legislation, which will open up the NHS to the widespread privatisation of services.
Unite cites two examples of this lack of grip – Andrew Lansley’s admission to the Commons health select committee that he was ‘still thinking through’ what would happen if one of the new GP consortia went broke; and a further admission that the role of Monitor – the regulatory body which will oversee fair play in the new ‘market’ – had not been finalised.
Increasing competition in the health service could lead to some hospital units closing, a leading doctor has warned.
Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, said NHS hospitals are likely to lose services to private companies under the Government’s reforms, which could leave them struggling.
As a result, many trusts will be “unable to cover the costs of entire departments”, which could lead to their closure, or cuts being made in other ways such as reducing staff numbers.
I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.
Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.
NHS news summary: There appears to be a growing acceptance that Lansley’s bill will destroy the NHS and transform UK health care to the US model i.e. health care only for the rich. UK Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg claims that he will “front up” the issue with the Conservatives. I wonder what that means and why he had to be directed by his party before starting his front-upping. Many GPs intend to retire early to protect their pensions and more cuts.
Conservative election poster 2010
A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
Experts published research today detailing why the coalition’s controversial Health Bill means the end of the NHS.
The paper, by Professor Allyson Pollock and David Price of the Centre for Health Sciences at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, shows how Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s NHS assault will amount to the break-up of a universal, comprehensive, publicly accountable, tax-funded service that is free at the point of use.
The researchers say that the government is going against its duty to provide comprehensive care by abolishing the structures and mechanisms needed to do this.
Nick Clegg told a meeting of his MPs in Westminster on Tuesday that he would now be “taking the lead” within government to rein in its programme of reform for the NHS.
The Liberal Democrat leader said he was determined to ensure changes were made to the health and social care bill, the clearest sign that he will personally negotiate with the health secretary, Andrew Lansley. A senior party source said that the Lib Dem leader had decided to “front up” the issue with the Conservatives.
Lansley’s reforms to the NHS – handing over a majority of the healthcare budget to GPs for commissioning, and scrapping primary care trusts – have been opposed by some Conservative MPs and the British Medical Association, and 10 days ago Lib Dems voted at their spring party conference to ensure modifications were made to the bill. Then it was suggested that even though the Lib Dems had registered their discontent, there was little their leader would be able to do within government.
