The prime minister says due process needs to be followed after revelations about Baroness Mone in the Guardian
Everyone is hard up at the moment – including the Conservative party, it seems. According to Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham, the party is raising membership fees by 56%.
This morning Steve Barclay said Rishi Sunak was taking “a very strong stand in terms of the priority of getting inflation down”. (See 10.02am.) But not for Tory members, it seems.
Continue reading...Unanimous judgment in UK’s highest court means Stormont assembly can proceed with abortion services bill
The Northern Ireland assembly can legislate to create buffer zones around abortion clinics to protect users and staff, the UK’s highest court has ruled.
The supreme court’s unanimous judgment means the assembly can proceed with the abortion services (safe access zones) (Northern Ireland) bill, which criminalises people who enter the specified areas and influence people attending clinics.
Continue reading...RSV, Covid-19 and flu cases are exploding, but many health officials aren’t forcing masks or discouraging in-person gatherings
Dr Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at St Louis children’s hospital, is just waiting for his cold to start. “I can list off about 10 people right now that have had some sort of illness in the past five days,” Newland said.
That’s because the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza seasons started months earlier than usual, amid the continuing spread of Covid-19 and the common cold. The flu hospitalization rate is the highest it’s been in a decade, according to public health officials. Scientists have described the collision of viruses as a “tripledemic”.
Continue reading...Labour’s motion calling on the government to release all documents and advice relating to contracts awarded to PPE Medpro has also now passed
Labour received £4.7m in donations between July and September, more than any other party, PA Media reports. PA says:
The sum received by Labour is significantly greater than that donated to the Conservatives, which, according to Electoral Commission data, received £2.9m over the same period.
The Liberal Democrats recorded about £1.7m, according to returns submitted to the Electoral Commission, with more than £11m in total donated to 19 separate UK political parties.
Lynch, the RMT general secretary, said the government was to blame for not allowing the train companies to make an offer acceptable to his members. He said:
The government are running the playbook and the strategy for the railway companies and directing what is going on. They have held back even these paltry offers to the last minute.
He claimed the rail companies were not losing out from strike action, because they were subsidised by the government, and he described this system as “perverse and corrupt”. He explained:
They get indemnified for every day of strike action. They are paid the money that they would otherwise have lost, and the only people that lose are my members who lose their wages and the public and these businesses in hospitality who lose their income as well, while the people I negotiate with lose no money whatsoever.
It is the most perverse and corrupt system we have ever seen in British business where those people that are conducting the dispute make no losses whatsoever and the taxpayer subsidises those people by money given directly from the DfT [Department for Transport].
He said the timing of the latest strikes was “unfortunate”, but he claimed the union was forced to act. He said:
We have to respond to what the companies are doing, and they’re doing that very deliberately. They’re seeking to ratchet up the dispute.
He accepted that, although the additional strikes were over Christmas, when rail services were very minimal anyway, they would create further disruption for passengers. In the past Lynch had said the RMT wanted to avoid strike action over Christmas.
He defended the RMT’s decision to object to a move to driver-only trains. Driver-only operation was “less safe”, he said. Women and disabled passengers wanted to see guards on trains, he said, because they felt that was safer and more welcoming. When the presenter, Justin Webb, put it to Lynch that driver-only trains still had another member of staff on board, and that they just did not have a staff member operating the doors, Lynch said that was wrong. He said most of these services did not have anyone else on board, apart from the driver.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, is up next.
Austin says there will be an increase rotational presence of US navy and army troops in Australia. It will see more US air, land and sea forces in Australia.
Our mateship will stand as a bedrock of future peace and security.
Continue reading...Labour force move to release material about awarding of contract to PPE Medpro through humble address in Commons
Ministers will have to release papers, advice and correspondence relating to the award of contracts to PPE Medpro, a company recommended by Conservative peer Michelle Mone who subsequently appeared to receive millions originating from its profits.
Labour forced the move through a “humble address” in parliament on Tuesday, which asked for the government to hand over documents involving ministers and special advisers relating to PPE Medpro to parliament’s public accounts committee.
Continue reading...Decline of 17% at public hospitals compared with previous year attributed to restrictions during Delta and Omicron waves
The number of elective surgeries performed across Australia has slumped to a 10-year low due to Covid-19.
New data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows there were 623,000 elective surgeries at public hospitals in the 2021/22 financial year.
Continue reading...Online black market exists where breast milk is bought by cancer patients, athletes and bodybuilders, among others
An exponential growth in Australians donating or selling breast milk online is putting infants at risk of disease, a bioethicist says, calling for human milk to be defined as a “tissue” and regulated in the same way as blood.
There are Facebook groups facilitating the donation or sale of breast milk in every state and territory. The “about” section for one group states: “Please post milky requests, offers and milk-sharing questions … It can be helpful to include details such as the age of your baby and your location or how far you are willing to travel.”
Continue reading...Demand back to normal in emergency department after long wait times for some patients with less urgent illness
The Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne is back to “normal” levels of demand after a surge on Monday night that led to emergency wait times of up to 12 hours.
Dr Sarah Arachchi, a general paediatrician who works across public and private hospitals in Melbourne, said a lack of bulk-billing doctors, summer viruses including Covid-19, and health anxiety among carers had led to the hospital having to urge people to seek alternative care if their child’s condition was not urgent.
Continue reading...Survey finds nearly a fifth of respondents have had suicidal ideation about financial problems
The shocking impact that soaring bills are having on mental health has been laid bare by a report that highlights how money worries are driving many people to thoughts of suicide.
The Money and Mental Health policy institute, a charity founded and chaired by the consumer champion Martin Lewis, reported that 17% of respondents to a survey said they had experienced suicidal ideation over the past nine months owing to the rising cost of living.
Continue reading...Serious illnesses among estimated 5m people in England who could not get an appointment in October may have been missed
Millions of people in England are struggling to get GP appointments and as a result some will not have serious medical conditions diagnosed until it is “too late”, Labour has warned.
The party has made new estimates based on the latest GP appointment figures for England with GP patient survey data.
Continue reading...Warning comes as health official says earlier start to cases in UK could be knock-on effect of pandemic
Downing Street has told parents to be on the lookout for signs of strep A infection after reports a primary-school pupil has become the eighth child to die in a matter of weeks.
On Monday, Alison Syred-Paul, headteacher at Morelands primary in Waterlooville, Hampshire, said: “Very tragically, we have learned of the death in recent days of a child who attended our school, who was also diagnosed with an invasive Group A streptococcal (iGAS) infection.”
Continue reading...Hip replacements fell 46% in UK as a result of Covid and knee operations by 68%, study finds
Britain may be the hobbling man of Europe, according to figures showing that the fall in the number of hip and knee surgeries as a result of the Covid pandemic was greater in the UK than in any EU country.
The number of hip replacement operations fell 46% in 2020 in the UK, compared with just 7% in Germany and 12% in France. Meanwhile, the number of knee operations slumped 68% in the UK, compared with just 3% in Finland and an average of 24% across the EU.
Continue reading...Ex-minister claims Tory peer intimated unnamed firm she was helping was being treated unfairly
The Conservative peer Michelle Mone made “extraordinarily aggressive” lobbying efforts on behalf of a company bidding to supply Covid tests during the pandemic, Matt Hancock has claimed in a serialisation of his diaries.
The former health secretary claimed that Lady Mone made “wild accusations” about the procurement process, intimating that the company she was helping, which is not named, was suffering unfairly.
Continue reading...Workload from treating high number of extremely unwell children means patients may face 12-hour wait
Melbourne parents with sick children may face waits of more than 12 hours at the Royal Children’s hospital emergency department as it buckles under demand.
The hospital, in a statement on Monday evening, warned families should seek alternative care where possible given it was dealing with more than 90 patients in its emergency department.
Continue reading...After months in intensive care, Cesar Franco became the first person in Britain to have the operation because of the virus
“When I woke up I was confused. I remembered the doctors in St George’s hospital deciding to intubate me. But when I woke up from the intubation, I’d been transferred to another hospital, St Thomas’, and was on a machine that was keeping me alive. I wondered how things had gotten so bad and how I’d gone from being just ill to being, you know, very close to dying.”
Cesar Franco is reliving how he fell gravely ill with Covid-19 late last year and ended up in the intensive care unit (ICU) of St Thomas’ hospital in central London, helpless, struggling to breathe and only still alive thanks to the quiet pumping of an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (Ecmo) machine. It was the start of what became five arduous, precarious months in ICU on Ecmo. That is an unusually long time, even for a Covid patient, to receive what, for some but not all, proves to be life-saving care.
Continue reading...General practices have ‘steady profit margins’ and many are turning away from bulk billing, leaving poorer Australians without access to care, thinktank says
While doctors have called for higher Medicare rebates to meet the rising cost of providing care, a new report from thinktank the Grattan Institute argues that GPs have “steady profit margins” and that more drastic measures are needed to preserve Medicare.
General practices need to be overhauled to employ a team of health workers including physiotherapists and nurses to better manage rising rates of chronic and complex disease, the report led by Grattan health and aged care program director, Peter Breadon, said.
Continue reading...New report has called for urgent structural reform after finding women’s income and health have deteriorated in the past decade
Australian women have poorer health, lower incomes and less engagement in the labour force than men, a new report has found.
A health and wellbeing scorecard, published on Monday, has found that women’s economic equity and health have deteriorated in the past decade.
In 2020, women reported poorer health than men in all bar one domain, including in mental health, physical and social functioning, and bodily pain.
More women than men experienced elevated psychological distress, with rates since 2011 rising sharply in women aged 18-24 and 55-64.
Women’s social functioning, emotional and physical ability to perform their role declined between 2001 and 2020 – and was linked to financial inequity.
There are 2.7 million women missing from the labour force, costing the Australian economy $72bn in lost GDP annually – and also resulting in lower lifetime superannuation accumulations.
Continue reading...Nadhim Zahawi says parents should look out for symptoms of infection, such as fever, headache or skin rash
The UK government has urged parents to be vigilant for signs of a rare invasive form of strep A infection, after it was reported that a 12-year-old schoolboy from London was the latest person to have died after contracting it.
Nadhim Zahawi, a cabinet minister, said that although most cases of strep A were mild, parents should be mindful of the symptoms.
Continue reading...While health secretary Steve Barclay says he will not negotiate, unions suggest the compromise reached in Scotland could help avert strikes
Ministers were under intense pressure last night to open new pay talks that could avert a devastating series of NHS strikes as health unions suggested a deal could be struck if both sides were willing to negotiate and compromise.
Amid claims from Labour and from NHS sources that ministers appeared to be playing politics and deliberately “spoiling for a fight”, union leaders strongly suggested that an improved, but still sub-inflation, offer similar to that made to Scottish health unions at the end of last month by the Holyrood government – which has led to strike threats being lifted north of the border – could help break the deadlock elsewhere in the UK.
Continue reading...