Corbyn is *dangerous* on health

Some two decades ago, in Sydney, Australia, I ran a campaign. Many of my friends who were living with HIV/Aids were living in dire poverty. One of my friends was surviving in part on what he could grow in his back garden. So myself and the founding Editor of Sydney's gay newspaper (who sadly died before the campaign wound down) started a campaign to draw attention to their plight and demand that people lobbying around HIV/Aids take the issue of poverty more seriously.

We were successful and I ended up getting an award. What we also got was a hell of a lot of grief from those running HIV/Aids lobbying because, to describe their comments broadly, we were distracting from the big picture. And that big picture was making sure that new drugs could get trialed quickly, that promising drugs were properly supported and that as many as possible could get into trials (this was a time when candidates would be excluded for reasons such as that they might get pregnant).

Although I'm proud of that campaign, looking back I'm not proud of how those leaders were portrayed. This was a time before HIV drugs that really worked became widely available. Some of the hopeful ones were prolonging lives but many, many people were still dying. I am not unusual in having 50 people, including many good friends, die. My generation of gay men fought like rats in a sack over how best to fight this. There were a couple of other policy ideas which I supported which I got seriously thrashed over, as well as my being involved in a clinical trial of herbal medicine.

When you're in that sack it can be hard to see any big picture, and this is what I and many others missed. What those leaders were doing was literally fighting for our lives and, in many cases, their own. Nothing could stand in the way of getting drugs out which could prolong or save people's lives, including theirs.

That job involved making compromises and it meant working with government and it meant working with the pharmaceutical companies. Yes, sometimes lobbying them including running campaigns on certain issues against them, but mostly it was about putting on a suit and tie and attending endless meetings and reviewing a vast amount of documents. Many of those activists ended up become so skilled they could probably have qualified as pharmacists.

Who would they have sat opposite? People like the Head of Policy and Government Relations (the former job of contender for Labour Party Leader Owen Smith MP) for a company like Pfizer. They would work with them and - I know this for a fact - most of the people sat opposite would work in good faith back with the activists.

Standing outside with a placard only got you so far. This is a hard lesson gay activists learned very early on over HIV/Aids. Knowing when to invade a Cathedral and when to sit on a Committee with so-called 'Big Pharma'. That was the sort of practicality required in order to save as many as could be saved.

Gobsmacking stupid Corbyn comments

Launching his bid to retain the Labour leadership, Corbyn said this week:

I hope Owen will fully agree with me that our NHS should be free at the point of use, should be run by publicly employed workers working for the NHS not for private contractors, and medical research shouldn’t be farmed out to big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and others but should be funded through the Medical Research Council.

Isabel Hardman of The Spectator explained that the reason he made this stupid comment was:

It plays into the suspicion of many of his supporters that big business is always bad and doesn’t help society, whether that be by employing a lot of people, or, in the case for big pharma, responding to demand for drugs by researching and producing drugs. Big pharma is one of those dirty bogeymen that it is easy to set up as The Enemy, without really thinking through what the implications of taking out that Enemy might be.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) last year spent £506 million on research grants. Pfizer spent $6.6 billion (£4.8 billion).  The world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies between them spent just under £50 billion – 100 times as much as the MRC.

When I heard Corbyn's remarks I immediately thought of my dead friends and yelled very loudly on Twitter, for which I got a mostly positive response. How fucking dare he play politics with something as serious as this?

Let me just go back to what happened in Australia. Activists then would have positively wanted someone like an Owen Smith as the Head of Policy and Government Relations for a company like Pfizer. Anyone who thinks otherwise wasn't there and should just butt out.

Corbyn's policy suggestion would be an absolute disaster for health (not that he's ever going to be PM, of course). This should disqualify him but as Isabel suggested it's the opposite because his base has stupidly forgotten the lessons from something like HIV/Aids and prefer pious posturing to actual policies which help actual people. Anyone can dig up or even tell personal stories about some awful thing 'Big Pharma' has done. Harder is coming up with ways you can make sure those who produce most of the drugs that real people need do that essential job.

Instead we get jawdroppingly stupid memes like this circulating alongside endless crap - led by Corbyn, Diane Abbott et al - that working for drug companies means you can't be a socialist and that therefore disqualifies Smith.

Or ones like these that demonise pharmaceutical companies (none of the below is true):

 

A diluted scientific nerve

Corbyn is also a big, big fan of the con job known as homeopathy having signed a number of motions in Parliament backing it including one wanting NHS homeopathic hospitals and another which not only criticised the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee investigation into homeopathy but, as the science writer Ben Goldacre puts it, its language included "vindictive" attacks on him including "ad homs against me personally."

Asked to defend his signature on one motion here is what Corbyn wrote:

Junior doctor: Corbyn "b******s"

During his reign Corbyn has been criticised for mouthing platitudes on health but failing to support his Shadow Health Minister, failing to support striking junior doctors and failing to stop his Shadow Chancellor from trying to corner health policy for himself.

Will Turner, a junior doctor picketing St Thomas' Hospital - just a few hundred yards from where Prime Ministers Questions was taking place in the Commons - criticised Corbyn for not mentioning their strike at PMQs.

Dr Turner said: "It should be big news. It should be talked about on the biggest platform of political discussion we have got. We are unsure of the Labour agenda. They seem to be very vocal about Jeremy Hunt, very vocally pro the NHS, but not very vocal about junior doctors.

"One hundred per cent, Corbyn should have raised it. They are the Labour movement, it's a huge mobilisation of a massive work force. It's a missed opportunity."

Mr Corbyn raised education, child poverty and the economy but did not criticise the Prime Minister over the Government’s handling of the strikes.

Joe Lipton, a 32-year-old junior doctor also picketing at St Thomas', said Mr Corbyn had disappointed him.

Dr Lipton, of Beckenham, south east London, said: "I don't feel surprised. It's a familiar sense of anger that this is slipping down the political and public agenda when all of us have so much strength of feeling. I'm disappointed there isn't a vocal opposing speaking on our behalf.

"Jeremy Corbyn has spoken about the NHS in general but it is the fact he hasn't raised it today in parliament, when we are on strike for a record 48 hours, that I am disappointed about."

A consultant, who refused to give his name, described the Labour leader's silence as "b******s".

(Source)

The shadow health secretary, Heidi Alexander, had to stage a physical sit-in outside Corbyn’s office in order to get a decision from him on Labour party policy on the NHS.

(Source)

Heidi Alexander, who quit as shadow health secretary last weekend, has criticised John McDonnell’s “totally unacceptable” conduct in setting up a team of NHS policy advisers without telling her.

The Guardian reported earlier on Thursday that McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, had secretly created a group of advisers, bypassing Labour’s usual policymaking processes, and that two of the advisers were or until recently had been members of other political parties. McDonnell’s involvement with the group was first disclosed by Health Policy Insight, an influential source of NHS analysis.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Alexander said: “John McDonnell invited NHS campaigners to a meeting in the Commons but didn’t invite me. I challenged him about it. I was then invited and I was shouted at by some of the attendees.”

After that meeting on 13 April, she said, “John McDonnell then invited them to form an advisory group (again not telling me). I found out about this, said it was totally unacceptable and it must not be an advisory group.”

(Source)

If it isn't clear by now that Jeremy Corbyn on health is not just incompetent but positively dangerous then I don't know what evidence will convince. But then the Dear Leader has made clear he's not a huge fan of 'evidence based' solutions now hasn't he?



======


MRC/drug research info via Ross Clark.

Corbyn screengrab credit @twlldun

UK medical research funding breakdown image via @josephclift

Thanks to Glyn for prodding me into writing this.

When corruption isn't the real problem in Eastern Europe

The ouster of Romania's Prime Minister following a disaster last month in a nightclub has universally been put down to a revulsion against corruption. In this article, reblogged with permission from LeftEast, an alternative explanation for what happened is put forward: that the real problem is austerity.

What regulation existed had been relaxed and there weren't enough people to enforce it. It was a disaster waiting to happen. And the health system was shown massively wanting for those who survived.

====

By Florin Poenaru

On October 31st during a rock concert in the underground club Colective in Bucharest a fire broke out, killing 27 and injuring another 200. Almost a fortnight after the total number of casualties reached 54, with many more still in critical condition in hospital.

This was the biggest tragedy in the recent history of Bucharest and its social effects will still be felt in the foreseeable future. In the short run, this dramatic accident sparked a series of processes that are still underway and whose significance is still uncertain. In this text, I will try to highlight some of the social forces and processes that this tragedy simultaneously brought to light and managed subsequently to obscure, especially by the way it was integrated into a certain symbolic and discursive universe.

While the real dimensions of the tragedy were still not fully known, the Romanian President went public and offered what became the main framework for explaining the tragedy: corruption kills. Since the site where the concert was held lacked any proper amenities or authorizations for such events while the authorities looked the other way, the corruption of the local administration and of the political class in general were conveniently blamed for the deaths. Such an immediate explanation for the tragedy resonated with what is already the main popular framework in Romania: things go wrong because of corruption, especially the corruption of the political class as a whole. This tragedy was just the ultimate example.

The moment Colective club caught fire

After a day of mourning and silent marches across the country in the memory of the victims, the people took to the streets on Monday November 2 in huge numbers and demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister, Victor Ponta. Surely, there was no direct connection between him and the tragedy, but Ponta has been framed for long as the embodiment of all that is wrong with the political class, especially its corruption. Accused of plagiarism, Ponta was also recently indicted and is awaiting trail for corruption and abuse of power. In fact, his days were numbered ever since he lost the Presidential elections almost a year ago. Then he was defeated precisely by the anti-corruption rhetoric and by a candidate who seemed to come from outside, or at least from the margins of the current political establishment. This tragedy became then the perfect moment to finally get rid of the prime minister, a fact calculated by the President who offered corruption as the immediate explanation for the tragedy.

Therefore, what seemed to be a genuine sudden outburst of anger following the tragedy was right from the beginning directed towards very concrete political goals at play in the prolonged struggle that has been taking place in Romania in the past 12 months. Prior to this tragedy, the vice Prime Minister Gabriel Oprea was already under heavy street pressure to offer his resignation after a policeman in his escort died in an accident provoked by the breaking of a legal. Oprea and his parliamentary fraction were the only reasons Prime Minister Ponta was still in power. The nightmare of Colective swapped both of them aside and paved a way for appointing a new prime minister by the President.

While this framing of the tragedy as an outcome of corruption was indeed very powerful and continued to inform most of the subsequent demands of the protests in the following days, the exact details emerging after the accident opened up alternative interpretations and a new set of different questions. Such details could not simply be subsumed under the anti-corruption narrative.

For example, it turned out that the there were not enough local fire safety inspectors following the cuts in the public administration during the austerity measures imposed after the financial crisis. Moreover, the legal provisions were very much relaxed in the past years in favor of business owners. The official policy of the local administration to transform the center of Bucharest in a place of consumption and fun enabled entrepreneurs to open up places with little official oversight and minimal investment in infrastructure. Deregulation, not corruption emerged as the main culprit.

Maria Ion

Furthermore, details about the people killed in the accident complicated the picture even more. One of the victims was the cleaning lady of the club. Maria Ion was the homeless single mother of five who had been waiting for years in vain to get social housing from the Mayor house. Her family got it after her death during a TV show in which what was supposed to be a social right became an act of charity. The club employed her illegally, without proper documents, regular payment or social insurance. So were the bartender and the bodyguard working there, both of them in mid-20s and now dead.

The number of the injured soon put an immense strain on the city’s hospitals. They had difficulties coping with the influx of badly injured people and doctors and nurses had to be brought from homes and work long shifts in order to deal with the situation. It became obviously clear that hospitals in Bucharest are understaffed and quite unprepared to deal with catastrophes of such scales. The special clinic for cases of severe burning was not functional at the time of the tragedy. This of course should not come as a surprise given the number of doctors who left the country and the ridiculous salaries paid to those who stayed. The system has been under-financed for 25 years and the main idea of reform is just privatization. As many people have observed, it is better not even to think what would have happened if such a tragedy had occurred in a small provincial city in the country.

In this context, relatives of patients asked for them to be treated abroad. This might have been an emotional reaction in some cases, and an impossible demand given the state of the patients, but it nonetheless reflected the popular belief that the local medical system cannot be trusted. In the past, the president, the prime minister and many other notable officials chose to seek medical treatment abroad in a sign of no confidence in the local system.

It also emerged that many of the injured ones, a vast majority of them young students and professionals, do not even have basic medical insurance, reflecting a wider trend among the unemployed and underemployed Romanian youth living in conditions of basic precarity and vulnerability that usually remains hidden.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, and following well-known knee-jerk reactions in such cases, a series of controls and official declarations painted an even grim picture. It turned out for example that over 90% of schools in Romania do not meet fire regulations. Even by the current legislation, lax at it is, they should be closed. Also, about 200 buildings in Bucharest, including popular cinemas, clubs, restaurants and shops, are in such an advanced state of dilapidation that they should be immediately closed. They are still functional. In addition, tens of blocks of flats in Bucharest and dozens of other buildings are in danger of collapsing in case of an earthquake. The exact number is not even known.

While it is politically productive and intellectually convenient to blame the death of people in Colective on corruption, the sobering truth is that they are victims of the current state of deep underdevelopment of the Romanian society. Corruption cannot be dismissed tout court, but it is not a cause. It is also an effect of the same mechanisms that contributed to the current situation. Deregulation, the neoliberal policies of reducing the state to the bare minimum and of privatizing public goods, the flexibilization of the labor code and the dismantling of any collective bargaining rights, the assault against social services and the demonization of the “welfare profiteers”, market fundamentalism and the fetishism of individualism, profit and success – in short the consensus of the transition yeas made inevitable the tragedy in Colective.

In such cases, emotions run high and comparisons fly like shrapnel. But the sheer scale of the tragedy in Colective should not blind us to the fact that this was not an isolated case, even though the collective number of victims is staggering. Just a few days after the tragedy in Bucharest a bread factory in Brasov caught fire. A worker was killed and others were badly injured. It turned out that many workers were trapped inside because they could not open the doors with their magnetic cards once the electricity went out. For the majority of the people, working and living conditions in Romania render them not only vulnerable and precarious but also almost entirely disposable in the process of accumulation and profit.

In this context, there is a deep ironic paradox in the decision of the protesters to ask for the resignation of the prime minister. As a politician, Ponta was unwilling and unable to break with the neoliberal consensus and his main policies (the fiscal code, etc.) were geared towards the benefit of business owners and global capital. Such a conduct is completely unsurprising from a social democrat nowadays everywhere in Europe. But Ponta was able to break with the austerity measures of the former conservative government and to offer some modicum reprieve to labor and state employees. He was also bent towards a more liberal Keynesian measures including more state regulation.

By pushing for his resignation the protesters decrying the events in Colective just paved the way for the proponents of neoliberalism and austerity — the main culprits of the tragedy — to come back to power in the next elections.

* This article originally appeared in Croatian on the Bilten website.

No, Guardian, we can't have nice things

Oh, the irony.

In the Guardian Polly Toynbee argues for the new NHS database of patient records and the scheme whereby researchers can make us of it. (Toynbee is the Guardian's doyenne.)

She patiently explains that it will use anonymised data and people can opt out and there are layers of privacy protections. Any fears about privacy are overblown and we already see benefits such as identifying possible new cancer drugs.

The fear is that patients will be identified, losing control of their records and trust in their GPs. But the protections are many and thorough: patients records transmitted to the Health and Social Care Information Centre are fed through an automated anonymiser. The information commissioner has strict oversight over each stage. The Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association back the project.

Is there any risk? Yes, some rogue researcher always might – with difficulty – trace back to the probable patient. But that's only the same risk as with previous use of patient data. Next week's leaflets and posters will tell patients they can refuse to let their records be used: under the present system 750,000 patients do opt out.

She rails against other newspapers for their 'scare tactics' that the data will leak and could be sold.

From the comments below her piece, which are already overwhelmingly negative:

I find it a tad difficult to believe, given the current access, scope, range, and sheer computing power that GCHQ posses that however the data is anonymised, it almost most certainly begins life as extremely personalised and private, is attached to a name and to an nhs number and GCHQ should it decide to, would be capable of digging down to the individual.

As I pointed out in my article about the Guardian's promotion of Glenn Greenwald's linkbait, hysterical, debunked 'revelations':

Once you get people to distrust government in one policy area it is so much easier to turn them off in another - like healthcare or economic stimulation. This lets in corporate control which those banging on about the evil government have either shown little or no interest in (see the stupid pat response I just dealt with [corporations don't arrest or murder people]) or have cloaked, bait-and-switch style, their real positions [namely, libertarian, pro-corporate].

Et, voila. We can't have an obvious good from Big Data because 'government is evil!'

Nothing, no level of accountability or democratic oversight, nothing will ever be good enough. People want the whole thing torn down, even in the socially positive situation Toynbee highlights.

But it is difficult impossible to explain how the left would manage policing and security, let alone how we would reform them, when the atmosphere is dominated by falsehoods and lies. How can you reform something which is thought to be terminally broken and which people are being led to believe cannot be managed by the people - us - through a democratic system?

And, of course, no one is pointing out or railing against very similar use of corporate metadata, which has the same technical ability to breach privacy, by health care researchers.

I wrote that:

No one has polled this in the UK but I would be shocked if Greenwald's work has not impacted trust in government here as well. At least in the US there are some voices challenging the falsehoods, in the UK who is doing this?

To be fair it hasn't just been the Guardian doing this but for a leftie Guardianista who sees the good government can do to be seemingly ignorant of her own newspapers' role in destroying that trust is beyond ironic.

Smoking: shunning, banning, fining - what's next?

Remember when Michael Bloomberg tried to ban large cups of soft drinks (a judge blocked it) and it became a thing, a meme? Not just a local ordinance but a symbol of something else? 'Big Brother' vs 'save-the-obsese-children'?

What to say of the new University of California 'educational' ordinance banning smoking everywhere: outside dorms, in the middle of lawns - everywhere, even chewing it is banned. It's unclear but marijuana cookies with a doctor's certificate seem to be OK.

According to student newspaper the Daily Bruin, how they plan to police persistent 'offenders' is opaque:

The policy, which aims to educate people about the effects of tobacco, bans the use of tobacco through the use of pipes, water-based pipes, electronic cigarettes and cigars….

Students who keep using tobacco on campus after repeatedly being told to stop would technically be violating school policy and the student code of conduct, Sarna said. She added that students could receive a warning, which means that the dean will give the student a notice stating the student’s behavior may have violated university policy or regulations. If the behavior is repeated, the student may be subject to further discipline, according to the UCLA student code of conduct.

Faculty and staff could be written up by their superiors for using tobacco on campus.
However, it is unlikely they would be fired for the violations, said Timothy Fong, associate professor of psychiatry and member of the Tobacco-Free Steering Committee.

Sarna said she hopes that group pressure to not use tobacco on campus will help to enforce the policy.

"Group pressure"? That's a bit loaded don't you think?

Shun the unbelievers

If you bought some cigarettes in Australia today you'd be looking at a packet which is one big, graphic health warning. Packaging for brands there is banned, a world first.

Now the actual banning of cigarette sales is being considered, to those born after the year 2000.

The state of Tasmania is first off the blocks. The plan, introduced last year into the state's parliament, would be introduced in 2018. No one now 12 years old or younger would ever be allowed to buy cigarettes. South Australia is considering similar action.

Australia has led world efforts on demonising smoking and now a policy of ending it altogether is the New Normal.

Supporting the Tasmanian proposal, Cameron Nolan wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald that the profits of tobacco companies are "ill-gotten gains" and compares them to the criminal drug gangs. He claims that "most" Australians "demand that our government prohibit the creation of such unscrupulous markets." Writing that Tasmania's plan will protect future generations he says that "it is time for the government to pick up a knife and cut the problem in half."

A conformist, illiberal society

Critics charge that what they call a ""nanny state" would create a 'slippery slope' that could lead to similar action on alcohol and fatty foods. Proposals have been made in Australia to license smokers and to only allow them to purchase so many cigarettes per day. Various places ban welfare recipients from buying cigarettes, including Los Angeles as of last month.

Other critics have called it a return to the prohibition era of bans on alcohol and a reflection of the failed 'War on Drugs'. Writing for the Australian news site Crikey, Martyn Goddard points out that existing Australian policy is working. The numbers of people smoking, especially amongst the young, has plummeted. Goddard points out that cigarettes contain an addictive substance, like currently illegal drugs, and a similar ban on cigarettes would just fuel a criminal industry illicitly supplying 'addicts'.

The patterns of cannabis use show how powerfully attractive a drug --  even a relatively non-addictive one -- can become, particularly to the young, if the allure of mild outlawry is bestowed upon it. Naughty is nice, even when it isn’t really nice at all.

It is a fantasy to say that this ban will result in a smoke-free generation. It won’t. It will lead instead to the criminalization of an entire generation of law-abiding people.

Similar bans to Tasmania's are being considered in Sweden and Singapore. In Scotland the plan is for the country to be 'smoke free' within two decades. Reports of policy under consideration there include a ban on all tobacco commerce, much more tobacco tax and laws against children ever being exposed to the sight of someone smoking.

Writes Simon Clark for politics.co.uk of Scotland's plan:

Things have got out of hand. There is now a degree of bullying involved that is unacceptable in a tolerant society. People are no longer educated to cut down or quit. Instead they are insulted and coerced and made to feel like lepers.

As long as we don't harm other people we should be allowed to take risks. If we try to eliminate every risk through draconian legislation we create a bland, conformist, illiberal society.

Sounds about right.

Swine flu black humour

Ya gotta laugh. No, really ...



Miss Piggy Dies of Swine Flu

Miss Piggy, actress and star of television, stage, and screen, has become the first celebrity victim of the Swine Flu Epidemic. The 39 year old actress passed away at Hollywood Hills Hospital surrounded by family, friends, and a representative from Peyton's Meat Packing Plant.

Read on ...

What they told us last time ...



'Ole reliable

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Last 100 Days
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

This is pretty amusing too

Notes

Barry in Hawaii.

When Barry visited London, Cameron gave him a box of CDs including albums by the Smiths, Radiohead and Lily Allen. Er, this is not Obama's taste. (Head. Hands ... )

Interesting ... The BBC's crap US election coverage last week had Hillary Clinton atop its list of possible 'Obama running mates'. Now it's flipped to Joe Biden atop and Hillary a-bottom.

Shameless.

As you may have noticed I'm a bit interested in the US election. So the coming week in Denver at the Democrat national convention has especially drawn my interest, in particular what Hillary and her fans will do. Maureen Dowd thinks she'll shit stir and I think she may be right - given that she's yet to slap down her more rabid supporters, aka PUMAs ('party unity, my ass'), and despite them being very few in number and turning into a Roveite Republican black-op.

The reason she lost has been analysed and the internal memos leaked: it was an incredibly badly run campaign.

Dowd's killer quote:

“A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”

Biden has a mouth on him. See Huffpost's video highlights.

According to this article in Africa Confidential, most of the Mugabe regime's ill-gotten gains are being ferreted out of Zimbabwe via UK and South African banks, ending up in either Malaysia or China.

It is this outflow of capital that is more than anything else destroying Zimbabwe's economy. Zimbabwe's capital exporters have intensified their operations as political and economic conditions have deteriorated, promoting a cycle of decline.

Regarding the talks, Zimbabweans have just 'a small measure of weariness and a massive dose of wariness'

Meanwhile, Mugabe's supporters latest tactic is poisoning.

In Haiti people are eating mud cakes.

Israeli civic organisation B'tselem has been giving out camcorders to people in the West Bank to record attacks by settlers and the IDF. Says more than a thousand words and some have already had play on Israeli TV with subsequent slaps on the wrist to soldiers shooting people in the foot and the like.

Here's one. 'Settlers attack shepherds in Southern Hebron Hills'.



Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been the best source on the really odd story about the so-called anthrax attacker. This is ongoing.

UPDATE: Nature, the preeminent journal of science, has an Editorial today (headlined: "Case Not Closed") echoing Sen. Grassley's demand for "a full congressional or independent enquiry into this case"; arguing that "the absence of such a full disclosure can only feed suspicions that the FBI has again targeted an innocent man in this case";

How much public money is a gold medal worth?

In Beijing, each gold medal has cost Australia at least $50 million, says Kevin Norton, a professor of exercise science at the University of South Australia. Or, to put it another way, $12 million came out of the public purse for each medal of any colour. Now we're told these sums are a pittance compared with what is needed to maintain our ranking in London.

What is it with Liverpool? The only big UK city not to host a gay pride and, says, one councillor "homophobia is endemic". This comes in the wake of a underreported killing of a gay teen where the killers got bail.

This story perked me up. I'm out of touch with the state of HIV drugs but according to The Indie cocktails are such now that takers can expect something approaching a normal life expectancy. This isn't everyone and like many of my generation who lived through the worst I fear for the young who are seroconverting in record numbers. But this is progress.

Aw yeah. We can destroy the world and we can be funky whilst doing it!



Quote of the moment:

'It is one thing, and a good thing, to arrest the man, Karadzic,' [Fikret Alic] says. 'He was the big war criminal, the man with the idea for all that happened. But it is another thing to arrest the idea. Karadzic's ideas live on in the existence of Republika Srpska, and if this is all about joining the European Union, for the Republika Srpska to join the EU would be like Europe admitting a part of Germany that still agreed with Hitler, just because it is in Europe. I have rebuilt the house you are staying in now, but in 1992 it was burned while my grandmother was inside - she is one of the 3,205 people still missing - and I was taken to Omarska. No one has ever said sorry for what they did, no one has ever helped us to return and the authorities oppose outright any monument in Omarska to what they did.'

And on a much lighter note when asked 'How do you relax?' sez Dizee Rascal 'A blow job relaxes me'.

The Condoms Of Champions

A Chinese rubber maker called Elasun 'feels the spirit':





Great idea, but good for the gays?

Unnatural

We're doomed I say, doomed ...

"[Pringles] has a shape not found in nature, being designed and manufactured for stacking, and giving a pleasing and regular undulating appearance which permits comfortable eating."

Potato based content = 42%

Less taxes for us them!

... I draw attention to various George Monbiot columns about the DOOMED nature of us westerners carrying on like this ... as well as the results of eating their 'low-fat' variety (think Olestra, think "anal leakage") ...

Health sites and memories

A friend pinged with with info about a patient community website he'd just found; Patients Like Me.

He'd found it very useful to exchange experiences and information with those with his condition. I had a look around the site and found thriving communities, including one for HIV/AIDS.

This took me right back to two decades ago (gulp) when the first internet responses to AIDS appeared. In the early 90s I edited a magazine which needed the latest research information. This, literally, came off the boat, so was several months old. So when I encountered the net it was with astonishment that all this info was there and brand new!

The info was pure text and basically a fairly unusable, certainly unsearchable, database interface. But it was astonishing.

What I was looking at was the AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGiS), which is now the world's largest Database of AIDS information. (The only resource larger is the U.S. National Library of Medicine, but it only offers some of its information on a website).

Since 1992, AEGiS has sought out scientific abstracts from local, regional and international AIDS conferences, related news, reports, and journal articles and compiled them a fully-indexed, cross-referenced and keywords searchable database.

The site is deliberately light on visuals that would make it difficult to access for those with slower computers.

It was originally started as a small electronic bulletin board system (BBS) by Jamie Jemison in 1986. Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark, a transsexual pioneer, and US Navy/US Army veteran took it over in 1990, inspired by meeting an isolated young man with AIDS in rural Missouri. Under her direction and tireless effort, the database grew and grew.

She worked 18-hour days from the living room of the mobile home she shared with her aging parents. It sits just across San Juan Creek near LA from the new 1,700-square-foot office, which Clark's 93-year-old father, Ed, happened upon and recommended for AEGiS just months before he died. They moved into that office only a few years ago.

AEGiS is nowadays funded by the US National Library of Medicine, Elton John AIDS Foundation, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, John M Lloyd Foundation, Roche / Trimeris, and the Bridgestone/Firestone Trust.

Sister Clark is one of my heroes, a real web pioneer and a true inspiration.

She's received many awards including the 'Award of Courage' from the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and the Human Rights Award from the International Assn. of Physicians in AIDS Care. AEGiS was nominated for U.N. honors in 1999, 2001 and 2003.

Another hero and inspiration is epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani.

HIV/AIDS work is very political, including in affected communities, and that slants priorities and funding.

A good example would be the lack of promotion for many years of a 'negative' status for gay men - it was seen as somehow undermining HIV+ gay men. I suffered a lot of grief for that view when I worked in the area.

Pisani talks a lot of sense on these sorts of topics:

The problem, Pisani says, is that 80% of the Pepfar (Bush's AIDS initiative) budget goes on treatment. "Pepfar says great, we've got 1.8 million people in treatment. And next year it will be another 1.8 million! That will mean 3.6 million people. It's exponential - and that's the biggest question mark over the entire approach to Africa. The more treatment you have, the more infection you get."

ARVs [antiretroviral drugs] reduce people's viral load, she agrees, making them less likely to infect someone else - as long as they don't miss a single dose. "But it also keeps them alive longer, and healthy enough to want to have sex. You only have to look at the experience of the UK or US gay communities where we've had more or less universal access to ARVs for at least eight or nine years, and the number of new infections are rising. More people are living longer with HIV, and there is what we call behavioural disinhibition: 'Fuck the condoms, I don't need them any more, because if he's positive he'll be on drugs, so he probably won't infect me. And if I do get infected, it would be annoying, but not the end of the world.'

"But having Aids is not a picnic. Yes, it's great that all this stuff on treatment is happening. But it becomes all the more urgent to have effective prevention. And that's not happening."

"Is not a picnic" is putting it mildly, you can expect to live around 25 years on ARVs. It makes me despair that so many young gay men are condemning themselves to shorter lives without a single clue that this is what they're doing by ignoring the condoms. Plus the government is cutting back on preventions spend.

Pisani did a few interviews in the UK last month for her brilliant book The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS.

On News24's HardTalk, professional dick Stephen Sackur spent a lot of time quizzing her about 'mafia connections'.

• You can watch the interview here (23 minutes, RealVideo)

By contrast Andrew Marr, was more interested and asked great questions.

Her blog is also called The Wisdom of Whores.

Google Reader clips catch up

Sneak preview of iplayer 2.0.

The most important change is that we combined TV and Radio in the same iPlayer interface.

Which will be great for introducing a lot of radio comedy to new audiences and entirely appropriate for the viewing circumstance - via computer or via mobile.

There's a stack of other great user-driven new features in it.

Elizabeth Pisani: Washington has more HIV than Nigeria

In part because Congress has until just a few months ago stood in the way of clean needles for injectors in the city, the capital of the world’s largest economy has HIV rates similar to those in many African countries.

Much web 2.0 isn't accessible but this looks set to rapidly change. Accesify reports that Firefox 3 is "a big accessibility enhancement in the form of WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications) support."

And the RNIB’s Web Access Centre Blog says:

This is an exciting time in the browser area as support for the Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) suite gathers pace in the next generation of browsers. Browsers with support, partial support and planned support for WAI-ARIA include Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Opera and Web Kit based browsers including Apple’s Safari.

Leading industry commentator John Battelle declares that with search It's Over. Google Wins.

MP Tom Harris got roasted in the MSM for comments on his blog and Minister and longtime blogger Tom Watson's points to hypocrisy and lack of MSM coverage of that hypocrisy by one of Harris' tormentors - Tory MP Philip Hammond.

If ever there was a time for British bloggers to pick up on a story that the mainstream press have missed/ignored, this is it.

Steve Dale artfully dismisses a CBI claim that Browsing websites costs billions in lost productivity.

I just hope that managers will not use this report as further ammunition to restrict workers from using the web for anything other than browsing their own company’s web site. Let’s not apply 19th century working practices to 21st century workers!

The BarCamp idea just happened in Nairobi!

• Wiki. Flickr.

Fantastic idea posted by Simon Dickson, The power of postcodes.

Postcodes are the country’s greatest example of the Power Of Information. I believe we would unlock significant power if we enshrined postcodes as our key national geography, asking Royal Mail to bequeath them to the nation. All statistical and political geography should be aligned with postcodes, with a commitment not to change them for 10 years, perhaps coinciding with the Census cycle. I don’t care if there are marginally more meaningful statistical boundaries; a flawed system we all understand beats a perfect system nobody understands. Oh, and it’s cheaper too.

Shane McCracken channeling Steve Webb posts that MPs are only just now being allowed to utilise laptops in HofC committee meetings.

Dave Briggs issues Three cheers for Dylan Jeffrey, a civil servant who took part in the debate about ICELE by commenting on his blog in Jeffrey's official capacity.

Of course, this week saw the publication of the guidance for civil servants engaging with the social web. Of the five main points, three were: be credible, be responsive and be a civil servant. Dylan hit all three of these.

Let’s hope other civil servants take note, and that Dylan’s colleagues at CLG thank him for doing this on their behalf.

The guidance has been the subject of much justified, excited comment within egov. It's genesis behind the scenes should be noted for some future history of this period. The actual movers here know who they are and deserve, unfortunately anonymous, thanks. The guidance just needs extending now beyond Whitehall!

John Edwards for CIO examines how new text analytics technology is being deployed in the US to examine customer comments on surveys and e-mail as well as monitor blogs, text messages, online chats, phone calls (through speech-to-text conversion) and social network profiles.

For content management products, Halper notes, text analytics can be a complementary technology; for example, text analytics can help categorize or enrich content, analyze content in a data repository, or improve workflow.

Also, vertical industries, such as the legal industry, are becoming increasingly intrigued by text analytics' ability to add insight to an array of routine business tasks, she says.

Today, many text analytics users believe that the technology provides a useful bridge to help nontechnical staff members get a handle on complex problems without running high-level searches.

"You can have business users who are not analysts really understand 'What are my top 10 problems?' or 'How is this issue trending over time?'" Bodoh says.

All new and early days though.

But while text analytics can rapidly generate vast amounts of deep customer insight, the technology is still far away from becoming an out-of-the-box solution.

"For our purposes, in order to get full value from the application, we will have to train analysts to use the software, invest in tuning the taxonomy to produce more granular analyses and integrate the output...with our enterprise data warehouse so we can use the combined data for even greater customer insight."

Emma Mulqueeny really likes Hazel Blears work on citizen empowerment.

* I can’t precis Ms Blears’ intro, you need to read it then come back for the rest if you need :)
* Bearing in mind that it is based on the GOB Green Paper, you need to know this bit of it: It aims to give citizens the means of participating in decision-making at every level; to clarify the role of Government, both at central and local level; to rebalance power between Parliament and government and give British people a stronger sense of what it means to be British (FWIW: I do not agree with the importance of the second point but hey ho)
* This paper is an action plan covering three areas:
1. Widening and deepening empowerment opportunities locally
2. Supporting and enabling people to take up empowerment opportunities
3. Strengthening local representative democracy
* In Summer 2008 there will be a review of this action plan, with a further plan set out thereafter (I know, I KNOW… these things take time)

One line which leapt out at me was:

Give citizens a greater role in planning
• Build an e-consultation hub: 2007 link every local authority and 2008 open the hub to the general public.

I wonder if this will replace, duplicate or actually means the much-loved, semi-privatised Planning Portal.

Another suicide follow up

I had a very moving comment to my post about the BMJ's article about search and suicide prevention.

Here it is:

Thank you for writing this article. I agree with you and believe that suicide should be a private matter and if someone wants to kill themselves they should be allowed to. Why do we force people to suffer in ways we would never allow a dog or cat suffer in. In any case they will, no matter what laws are out there and no matter how much society frowns on it. The difference is that without resources they may die painfully or fail and end up a vegetable.

I have a progressive neurological disorder. I live everyday in varying degrees of pain and have lost much of my abilities, despite taking time released pain med (because god forbid I should become addicted to my meds) because the amounts are not adequate.

Perhaps if people were able to get good pain control and the support they need they might not be looking at suicide. But many of us have little choice. I know that when my disease progresses to the point I can't take care of myself (and actually because of the laws that make it a crime to "assist" suicide, I'll have to do this before I reach that point) I am not sticking around. I refuse to end up in a nursing home where I have NO CONTROL over my own life and I will not be more of a burden to my husband then I already am. Again because of the stupid laws by these so called compassionate Christians I will be forced to die alone without my loved one who will have to establish an airtight alibi so they don't go to jail This just isn't right. I'm a disabled veteran and an adult. I should be able to end my life WHEN and HOW I want. The worst part is that you can't even talk with a mental health professional because they'll put you in the loony bin "to save you" because the only reason people kill themselves is because of depression (what a load of horse pucky). Maybe if it was safe to talk with someone people might go for help but since we know they will try and talk us out of it or will commit us we don't have that option. It would be nice to be able to talk with someone who has no stake in what is going to happen. Just to make sure you're thinking ok. But I'm rambling. Laws need to be changed so adults can make the decisions they need to make and can die at home comfortably surrounded by their loved ones. Think of how less scary death would be if children could see this natural end to life. And even adults might not have such a fear. I stayed with my father in law when he died at the hospital last year. It was peaceful and the way I'd like to go. He had his family around him, enough medications to make him comfortable and he seemed so happy to end the pain he had been in. I'd like to see laws created that would keep our rights intact and keep the government out of personal matters.

Because I lived through too many AIDS deaths I'm probably 'hardened' to these issues. I'm practical. I'm realistic. I'm not 'moral'. I knew people who topped themselves before they descended into hell/madness.

But as far as I'm concerned, yes, I didn't actually say in this article that I "believe that suicide should be a private matter and if someone wants to kill themselves they should be allowed to" (it was about search and 'suicide') but I do think that. My experience tells me that the alternatives are perverse and cruel.

Thank you to my commentator, 'Charlotte'.

NHS website - how much?!

I don't know what the NHS website costs but given their IT expenditure is in the multi-billions you would expect it's a lot. Maybe it's actually minimal. I don't know if this has bothered the Public Accounts Committee.

What I do know is that it appears to not contain any information about medical/doctor's certificates - those things which come in various flavours and require a visit to the GP. Definitely not 'a page' which contains 'the official info'.

Here's what happens when you type in 'certificates'.



Nowt of any use to anyone.

Actually another thing that happens is that a list of suggestions pop-up which are all about types of illness - obviously the site is geared around 'prevention'. This is pretty damn obvious from the homepage as well, as it yells 'FIVE A DAY MEALS ' at you.

The actual reason I was looking for 'certificates' was to provide information to people who needed to know something about the different types of them and what they meant. Y'know 'joined up government', 'do it online' and all that.

Plus it was people who were online anyway - looking at something I was attempting to link from - and in the particular case probably hadn't much clue about the way the system works. So, yes, talking to someone like a GP would help them but aren't we supposed to be saving government's money by doing more of the info provision online?

A fair bit of what the rest of government does is linked in some way to 'health'. Is this a case of dem silos? I would note that in my egov networking NHS people seem to be strangely absent ...

Postscript: turns out that info on medical certificates is on the DVLA website. Makes sense? Not.

Scrapbook clips catch up

My piece on 'Why Obama could be good for gays' has been republished by PinkNews, unfortunately the formatting fell through their template ;[

Arianna Huffington has been all over the UK media this week as she made a flying visit to London. I have been reading HuffPost since it started and am still waiting for it to do international news. It now has a green section and a 'living' section and, in London, much focus was on her move into local news.

The big, huge gap in American news reporting is international. It is very clear from reading HuffPost that even the liberals are plain ignorant. And why? Lack of decent reporting. It is pretty damming of Arianna's enterprise that she is putting local US news before developing a truly international section to her, now, very influential website — I just wish someone would say this to her and that didn't appear to happen on her flying visit.

One recent instance where HuffPost behaved badly was during the Burmese cyclone. They just reported and didn't link to donation sites — whereas the old school aka the New York Times did, and immediately.

Via Netimperative: Mobile advertising is the most unpopular ad format in the UK, according to new research from Dynamic Logic.

The study indicated that print advertising generates the most positive reaction with UK consumers and is seen as having the most relevance.

The Dynamic Logic ‘AdReaction’ study gauged consumer’s opinions of advertising.



Jonathan Zittrain interview on BBC News 24's Click.

His new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, develops the theme about how the commercial world's platform dominance will spike the sorts of developments which we need to drive the Internet further. I have always been queasy about the odd attitudes towards corps like Apple and their closed, exclusive partnership relationships. Zittrain nails why and I have to read the book.

I think that Tim Berners-Lee would agree. In a speech last week he said:

"How can we make the Web be an infrastructure that allows more than one person to think more effectively than one person can? There's no proof yet that for creative thinking we've done that," he said. "The challenge is to build a system that allows the formation of half-formed ideas and allows collective creativity."

HT: nomensa

Age Concern is developing an online campaign to encourage people to become more organised.

Cancer Research UK has launched a blog to tackle cancer myths.

Barack Obama is mentioning Google a lot on the trail to contrast himself with McCain (who cannot use a computer at all).

The authoritative Pew Internet Project has released a report on the election campaign thus far and found:

• 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.
• 35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos.
• 10% say they have used social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to gather information or become involved. This is particularly popular with younger voters: Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns.
  
• 6% of Americans have made political contributions online.
• 39% of online Americans have used the internet to access "unfiltered" campaign materials, which includes video of candidate debates, speeches and announcements, as well as position papers and speech transcripts.
  
• 5% of Americans have posted their own original commentary or analysis.
  

That's a lot.

One of the least reported aspect of the disaster that is Zimbabwe is the ecological crisis. This organization is trying to do something about it.

Shake hands with killers... Harare Tribune article on the history behind today's suffering.

At Zimbabwe's Independence then Prime Minister R. G. Mugabe established a government of apparent reconciliation including Zapu leader, Nkomo. The apparent integration of former warring combatants, Zanu's ZANLA and Zapu's ZPRA, into one Zimbabwe National Army proceeded. But, behind what eventually was revealed as a continuing charade, the ruthless accumulation of all power by Zanu (PF) proceeded apace.

BBC News Online Magazine, 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate.

"The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."

Would Australia's PM ban Botticelli? Germaine has a good 'ole go at Australia's Catholic PM.

Rudd would not recoil in horror from Botticelli's Birth of Venus, one hopes, but that, too, is the image of an adolescent. For some months, travellers on the London underground have been unable to escape the image of a naked pre-teen, fully lit and meticulously detailed down to her faint cloud of pubic fuzz. But no child protection campaigners have picketed the Royal Academy.

The Village Voice's annual Queer issues had lots of good stuff, including Triumph of the Lipstick Lesbians.

Today's middle-class and wealthy lesbians, however, look mainstream. "I've certainly noticed a more glamorous element among lesbians," said Julie Bolcer, the news editor of Go magazine, a monthly based in New York that is this group's bible. Bolcer can be seen many nights prowling hot-girl clubs for news tips. She's surprised by how many women wear long hair and how "flagrantly feminine" many of her peers dress.

21st Century ad from Heinz:



Quote of the week 1, from Radio 4's The Learning Curve:

"Up to 20% of school pupils could be classed as disabled under the Disability Discrimination Act".

Quote of the week 2, from Tim Footman's The gay priests row is a holy smokescreen:

"Let's be clear: removing all the gay priests from the Anglican communion would provoke a serious staffing shortage; although they're better off than the Roman Catholic church, which would probably cease to exist if all the Hail Marys had to find alternative employment."