Marathon

Super day in parliament today: there is a division on the anti-abortion bill which is about to finish as I type and that will be followed by the first debate on the illegal invasion of Iraq since the war began. The day will be rounded off with a debate on whether the village of Cheam should be recognized as a postal area (! – that HAS to make you giggle).

Lots of chances for right to prevail. I hope the iraq debate IS embarassing for the government. Thanks to the SNP and Plaid Cymru for bringing it up – among the most honourable of MPs.

The abortion bill (which the results are out for now, as I have been typing!) was not passed, thank goodness.

Anyway, back to my essay writing…

Talking Climate Change

Just went to an excellent event at the LSE with Derek Wall talking about capitalism and climate change. More events to follow this week ahead of the Climate march on Saturday. I doubt I will be able to turn up to many/any, but they all seem well worth going to! It is all part of the first ever LSESU Climate Change Awareness Week.

TUESDAY OCTOBER 31st, 6pm, D202
Minor Distraction or Massive Challenge – How Does Modern Politics Deal with Climate Change?

SPEAKERS: Michael Meacher MP, Labour Party MP and former Environment Minister
Jean Lambert MEP, Green Party MEP

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 1st, 1pm, D206
DVD and Talk: The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

SPEAKERS: Sian Berry, Green Party Female Principal Speaker
Shane Collins, Green Party Drugs Policy Spokesperson

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 1st, 7pm, U8
Climate Change – An End to Development? The Wealth of Nations and the Health of the Planet

SPEAKER: Andrew Simms, Policy Director and Head of the Climate Change Programme at the New Economics Foundation (nef), and author of Ecological Debt

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 2nd, 3pm, D211
Climate Change: Reasons for Concern and Options for Action

SPEAKER: Dr. Simon Dietz, LSE Academic, Geography and Environment Department

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 2nd, 7pm onwards, The Quad
Climate Change Film Showing and Social!

FILM: The Great Warming, narrated by Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morisette FOLLOWED BY: Drinks, Food and Entertainment from the Live Music Society!

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 3rd, 2pm, E168
Reducing Global Emissions Equitably: the Contraction and Convergence Model

SPEAKER: Aubrey Meyer, Director of the Global Commons Institute (GCI) and Pioneer of the Contraction and Convergence Model

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6096084.stm

What a mistake! The assumption in this article is that global growth is a good thing that should be allowed to continue. Environmental limitations are seen as something to be worked around, not signs of a system that is ill at its foundations.

Green Taxes

So everyone is agreeing with green taxes now – the libdems, labour and even the tories. I guess it is progess of a form – but I have massive concerns. Green taxes can only work if there is massive redistribution of wealth in society. Green taxes without wealth redistribution would burden the poor unfairly and leave the rich, who can afford it, using more than their fair share of the earth’s resources. It is complicated, and my thoughts aren’t fully formed on the subject but I feel there are a few big pieces missing in what we are hearing from the grey parties. Green taxes can only ever be a very superficial part of the picture. To change society for the better and make it more sustainable, deeper change is needed. For a start, the consume-or-die attitude that prevails should be challenged. In the end, real ‘left wing’ economic ideas come into play here: unless we challenge the consumerist, ownership attidues that prevail in society, I believe we have little chance of moving in the right direction.There is a talk by Derek Wall tomorrow evening at the LSE: “Does capitalism equal climate change?” I’m hoping to be there to see it. I think the answer is clear, however, capitalism does equal climate change. The envrionmental and social challenges facing the world today have the same roots.
“As if a flea could own a dog.”

studentmedic

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Excellent post by greenman on his blog. Well worth a read!

Sian Berry for Councillor

Sian Berry, the new female principal speaker of the Green Party, member of greenleft and long-time anti-4×4 campaigner, is standing for a very winnable election in Camden on December 7th. Her interesting blog can be found here: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/greenberry/

London definately needs more Green Councilors and this is a great chance to improve things. In Hackney, candidates won just over 20% of the vote but (thanks to the first-past-the-post system) got just a single councillor in the whole borough!

studentmedic

Living Here

So the grand overlords at channel 4 have decided to name Hackney as the worst place to live in the UK. Second comes Tower Hamlets and fourth comes Newham. I wonder if the people who made these decisions have ever spent any real time in these places. I think they have forgotten that HUMAN BEINGS live in the places they cast off as awful. As someone who lives and studies in Tower Hamlets, works (well, as a student…) in Hackney and was on placement in Newham last year, I know that the last thing these areas need is such a label. The level of deprivation in all three areas is awful and the New ‘Labour’ government has done little on a national level to help disadvantaged areas break free of deprivation and poverty. This kind of survey does have one point though – it shows how awful this inequality is!

That I think Hackney is a really cool, diverse place is beside the point, but it really is. I have not seen anywhere as truly diverse as Hackney – almost every ethnicity is represented, truly amazing. It also has some really exciting potential, if the area was empowered to move in a sustainable, fair and equitable direction. There are badges out and a whole campaign: ”I <3 HACKNEY” – I do!
At least there is some good news on the government’s plans to hand over some more power to local authorities. However, it is a real missed opportunity too council tax still isn’t scrapped and council still don’t have the powers needed to do something about heathcare and policing on a local level.

Eastleigh was named the 9th best place to live based partly on the fact that there was going to be an airport to be built! Talk about unsustainable development!!!

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Green Party health spokesman slams further NHS privatisation

26th Oct 2006

Stuart Jeffrey criticises “immoral, unethical and inequitable” use of the private sector in healthcare.

The Green Party has reacted with amazement at the government’s response to the Select Committees report on Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTCs). The response from the Department of Health highlights their lack of strategic thinking or planning and shows that they have paid no concern to the impact that these centres are having on NHS hospitals. They have stated that the report is further evidence of the government’s love affair with the corporate sector and the destruction and sale of the NHS.

Stuart Jeffery, health spokesperson for the Green Party said, “The use of the private sector in health care provision is immoral, unethical and inequitable and should be stopped immediately. The idea that private provision paid for by taxpayer’s money is not ‘a departure from the NHS’s values’ is simply barking mad. The NHS plan stated that taxpayer’s money should be used for patient care – the government are using it to line corporate pockets.”

“The government has not modelled the impact that these providers are having on NHS services, and this can been seen in the financial collapse that we are witnessing in the NHS. This is utterly negligent behaviour and Hewitt and Blair must be called to account over this. The love affair with Blair’s corporate friends is wrecking our NHS.”

“There is no evidence that ‘independent providers can help the NHS provide better services for patients and better value for taxpayers’. The under utilisation of these facilities is well publicised and these providers have to pay their shareholders – there is no way they can be better value for money. They are also wholey unaccountable to anyone but their shareholders. This is no way to run health care.”

ENDS

Competition

Long time no post, mainly because my internet has been down and I don’t think it is good use of NHS resources to use computers in hospitals for bloging!

I was thinking recently about competition. In Green Alternatives to Globalisation, Caroline Lucas and the late Mike Woodin posit the idea that economics should move away from competition for the cheapest to a system of co-operation for the best. I was wondering how far that idea is transferable. Is competition always a bad thing? Is it sometimes a good thing? Can it be made a better thing?

For example, if a group of medical students are left in a room, competiton will inevitably arise. Each student will try to show off their own strengths and come out the ‘winner’. On one hand, it means all the students work hard to reach the top and therefore  one could say that the overall standard is raised. On the other, it means that students at the top will want to maintain their position there. To do this, they will try to avoid providing other students with useful information that might help them become better; so, rather than the average going up as a result of competition, it would go down. Co-operation would mean that such information and knowledge would be distributed among all the students. Does this mean that competiton is inherently bad or does it mean that competition needs to be modulated to ensure it is healthy and that co-operation is facilitated within the competetive framework? How far can we apply these ideas – to learning? to sport? Perhaps competition is only good as long as the rewards are not so great as to make ”winners” value their own positions at the top too much and ensure that they are willing to co-operate to make others as good (or perhaps better) than themselves in that field. I guess that points to the idea of no monetary reward and back again to the idea of socialism, which lies partly on the idea that material reward shouldn’t be necessary to encourage people to work for the good of society.

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Other musings:

I spent two hours in a multi-discipinary meeting reviewing cancer patients today. It occured to me that in this day and age of patient involvement, a review of treatment for patients where there are no patients present might go quite against the prevailing ethos. I wonder if it is ok to make decisions about a patient while the patient is not present and (more importantly) not invited to be present. Of course, the logistical difficulties around having a multi-disciplinary team with patients while mainting each patient’s confidentiality make it practically very difficult (unless we have patients waiting to enter the room one by one, to be faced with about 20 consultants/nurses/students/radiologists/pathologists!). I just wonder if there is any way that it could be done more inclusively.

studentmedic

Problems with your water?

The Guardian reports today (here) about how farms growing flowers to be sold in the EU are using water from rivers in Kenya that are already drastically depleted.  Well worth a read – another example of big transnationals damaging local, vital industries. I thought the article was well worth a read (perhaps alongside a viewing of The Corporation!).

Big Pharma

An excellent post about big pharmaceutical companies on Derek’s blog: http://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2006/10/robbing-sick-to-pay-rich-cancer-drug.html

On a similar note, I was shocked again on Friday by the extent of advertising from drug companies (I know, I should really be past that stage now, I have seen it so much). In addition to the usual free sandwiches for the doctors (which are there every single day!), today there were: post-it pads, pens, peak flow metres (typically cost about a tenner) AND a full hot lunch (quite decent stuff too!). In return for all the freebies, the reps get a stand from which they can hand out leaflets to the massing vultures (aka doctors)… It is all about brand recognition – if you remember their catchy name for a brand, you are more likely to prescribe their specific brand rather than cheaper, generic medicines which often have the same effect. This costs the NHS more money, leaving less for other treatments. They don’t seem to care about advertising to medical students either – they like us young and malleable!

Of course, they can’t just come in and give free lunches these days, they have to be sponsoring a meeting of some sort. I suppose that is a step in the right direction, but I still think it is awful!

studentmedic

“Everyone wants freedom, we just don’t want them, over there to have any” Chris McCormack

The Veil

Ignoring all the religious connotations of the veil, I want to briefly note down my thoughts about the veil as a dress choice. Would the veil be acceptable if it were not related to religion and was merely a dress choice? I personally think society would accept it more(despite furore about hoodies) – I do think that this whole debate has massive undertones of religious intolerance. While one could argue that hoodies look threatening, I think it would be really difficult to argue that one is afraid of a lady because of her headscarf! It is not as if muslims are forcing the rest of us to wear veils. It reminds me about a poem I read many moons ago:

They came first for the Communists,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

 I am still chewing on the idea of stopping a teacher of infants wearing a headscarf. I am pretty certain that there are no laws in Islam  requiring women to be covered around children.