Who gets the cash generated by this £100bn+ of public money? Is central Government now investing in commercial healthcare opportunities? When did we vote for a two-tier NHS? And are the staff being recruited - as I hear - from the free-to-use NHS? inews.co.uk/news/politics/…
The cost of this project - which has never been put before MPs or approved by Parliament - is approaching £2,000 for every man woman and child in the country. Who made the decision to spend that vast sum of money on this speculation?
The Government is nakedly ignoring the law requiring transparency around public contracts. And the Mail yesterday prepped us for Boris Johnson's half-brother joining the feeding frenzy. dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/arti…
These seismic changes in the landscape of the country - huge punts with public money, the NHS offering better healthcare to those who can pay, jettisoning Parliamentary approval for public spending - are happening almost entirely without scrutiny or even media interest.
We will almost certainly judicially review these choices. What else can we do? But we could use a little help. crowdjustice.com/case/operation…
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One or both were marked “private and confidential - not for publication”.
We have long (👇) deplored the practice of making threats which you say are confidential to try and stop your critics from telling the world you are trying to silence them. goodlawproject.org/they-want-to-s…
Neither letter pretends to be a formal letter under the pre-action protocol for defamation claims - a necessary precondition to suing. Yet each is pregnant with threat.
To intimate you have a legal claim which you don’t actually have also feels to us like a misuse of the law.
New article in the New England Journal of Medicine, founded in 1812 and amongst the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals. Its 2023 impact factor was 96.2, ranking it 2nd out of 168 journals in the category "Medicine, General & Internal".
I will share some extracts from it but tl;dr it is highly critical. It "transgresses medical law, policy and practice... deviates from pharmaceutical regulatory standards in the UK. And if it had been published in the United States... it would have violated federal law."
It calls for "evidentiary standards... that are not applied elsewhere in pediatric medicine... [and] are not applied to cisgender young people receiving gender-affirming care."
Labour caving to some of the richest people in the country - whilst raising the tax burden on employing the low paid - has been described as the "lobbying coup of the decade."
But how bad is it? 🧵
Well, we know that Labour promised to raise £565m per annum from taxing private equity properly. But, after lobbying, agreed only to raise 14% of that or £80m.
But in fact, it's worse that that (or better, if you are amongst that mega rich class).
For a particular type of carried interest Labour actually proposes to *cut* tax rates...
Three reasons why inheritance tax on farmland is a good thing (beyond the obvious - that it will raise money). 🧵
First, farmland being subject to inheritance tax will reduce the value it has as a token to pass wealth down tax free between generations, so that farmland is cheaper and farming more profitable.
Second, farmland being subject to inheritance tax will reduce the number of people who hold it as a token to pass wealth down tax free between generations so it is instead held by people who hold it to farm it so it is more efficiently used.
I see my tweets about the effects of Wes Streeting's ban on puberty blockers on younger trans people have been criticised by the DHSC’s adviser on suicides. 🧵
1. What is undoubtedly true is that Victoria Atkins was warned by her own civil servants about the ban on puberty blockers posing “a high risk of self-harm and suicide” and Wes Streeting followed his predecessor in ignoring that advice.
2. Before publishing my thread (below) we went to the Tavistock and Portman with these numbers for a response. Other journalists went to NHS England for a response. Neither denied the numbers and both declined to comment.