Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The open letter makes it clear that these issues are not confined to surgery or anaesthetics but are commonplace. Dr Hilary Williams said there was widespread sexual innuendo when she was a trainee. "It's quite frightening to think that the perpetrators are in some way being protected by current systems - not necessarily deliberately," she added. Related Female surgeons sexually harassed while operating 35,000 cases of sexual misconduct in NHS [alone] in five years We know that  half of women  have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace - this rises to  seven in 10  for disabled women.  One in eight  LBT women have experienced serious sexual assault or rape at work. Four out of five women don’t report the abuse they have experienced. Male violence against women is endemic Sexual violence endemic at UK universities and colleges Pervasive in UK schools

After exposing the myth of ‘private sector is good, public sector is bad’, Mazzucato – with Rosie Collington – takes on the big con of the management and consultancy business .

This is not news; it’s been going going for years. “Rather than selling off the NHS  outright – a decision politicians know would be unpopular – they are instead doing this through the backdoor, by stealth.” The NHS is being privatised by stealth under cover of the pandemic

 

 Jeremy Corbyn: Seize the time! John Molyneux, 29 October 2020 Today’s suspension of Jeremy Corbyn by Keir Starmer  is outrageous but it is also the culmination of a long process that began the moment Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party. From the very first day the British political establishment, led by David Cameron and supported by most of the mainstream media and a considerable section of the Parliamentary Labour Party, set out to discredit and destroy him.  This project had nothing to do with Corbyn’s personal strengths or weaknesses and absolutely nothing to do with anti-semitism,  real or alleged.  The motive was simple and obvious: from the outset they perceived Corbyn and especially those who supported him and were mobilized by him as a threat to their interests, precisely because he had a long record as a socialist, as an anti-racist campaigner, as a defender of workers’ rights and, particularly, as an opponent of war and British imperialism. The last they found

 The myth of the ‘efficient’ private sector has been busted by Covid

“ So, Russian "actors" (why actors?) sought to influence the outcome of the UK general election by amplifying (not leaking, but amplifying) a dossier about US - UK trade talks which showed that the NHS was being put on the table by the Tory government.  I mean, only someone really stupid would think that the serious thing here was the Russian actors amplifying, and not the actual report showing the Tories were selling off the NHS to Trump! Did the British public not have the ri ght to know? I would say that, if anything, these Russian "actors" should be thanked for having acted in the interest of democracy in revealing these scandalous secret deals being hatched behind the backs of the British electorate. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why this report on Russian meddling has not seen the light of day while the Tories had control of the intelligence and security committee.  This is also likely to be the reason why on the same day that the rep

An interview with the Lancet editor Richard Horton

A new world won't emerge as if by magic

"We are all in it together" A letter from a doctor to Boris Johnson published a few months ago: ' Johnson has contributed to thousands of deaths ' Related 'The greatest global science failure for a generation' 'Herd immunity' or lockdown

Coronavirus deaths of BAME doctors amd nurses Related Ethnic minority academic Ethnic minority workers When do you become "British enough"?

"It seem clear that, for whatever reason, Western political systems have proven incapable of responding rationally, in time, to the Coronavirus threat. As Richard Horton writes of the government, overwhelming scientific evidence of an advancing threat did  not  generate the required action: 'For unknown reasons they waited. And watched.’

Britain as Conservative and imperialist country, and a pioneer of an aggressive form of capitalism. Even Le Monde Diplomatique doesn't include Britain's foreign policy of the contending parties! UK's austerity elections

Britain “The scorn which the angry young men hurled at the establishment was a class resentment but one devoid of any class consciousness,” feminist Lynne Segal writes perceptively in  Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy . In the decades that followed, shaped by race riots, feminism, Thatcherism, the miners’ strike and the collapse of heavy industry and trade unionism, working-class solidarity appeared to fracture. The rise of what’s now called identity politics began. From the the Blitz to Brexit "While in 1931 10% of married women  were in work, that rose sharply to 21% in 1951 and 47% in 1972 It is interesting to draw a c omparison here . If in an industrial power like Britain, an Empire, with 200 years of capitalist development, women became half of the workforce only in early 1970s, how should one analyse the condition of women in Africa and the Middle East? Why Arab women, for example, do not in total terms make half of the workforce? Does that have somethi

The People's Republic of Walmart ?

Britain The historical gain that the fundamentalists have not privatised yet. Or, they have partially privatised, along with a steady creation of private healthcare. Imagine how much profit a Branson could make if it is given to him and thus he speeds up  commercial travels to space!

"By contrast with their forebears in the 1960s and 1970s, British students today appear to be politically disengaged. While French students can still be found on the streets protesting against neoliberalism, British students, whose situation is incomparably worse, seem resigned to their fate. But this, I want to argue, is a matter not of apathy, nor of cynicism, but of reflexive impotence . They know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can’t do anything about it. But that ‘knowledge’, that reflexivity, is not a passive observation of an already existing state of affairs. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reflexive impotence amounts to an unstated worldview amongst the British young, and it has its correlate in widespread pathologies. Many of the teenagers I worked with had mental health problems or learning difficulties. Depression is endemic. It is the condition most dealt with by the National Health Service, and is afflict

NHS England "The number of nurses who leave every year is enough to staff 20 hospitals"

Britain's National Health Service "Patients are dying in corridors" " Since 2010 the budget has been rising at about 1% a year on average whereas  traditionally the NHS got over 4%." Deliberate policies to completely privatize the sector? I think so so. People like Richard Branson have already put a foot in it. They must be rubbing hands. Remember, everything is subject to commodification, especially in the most aggressive neoliberal capitalist countries. Patients 'dying in hospital corridors'

Brexit: A Fake Revolt "Leaving the EU won’t guarantee a rise in wages, a cap on rents, or a fall in NHS waiting times and class sizes. The only thing it guarantees is more rightwing Tory control." Yes, Paul. It's a fake revolt and I would add that it is reactionary. Remain is not progressive, either. It is a ruling class crisis as the referendum itself is a product of an economic and social crisis.