Who are the Cranks?

 

A friend asked me yesterday why I was writing so many blogs on the coronavirus. In slow motion here’s my answer.

I started this one today at 6 am after waking from a curious dream. In it, my wife and I were eating dinner cooked by one of our best friends, a life-long vegetarian. Her Irish father ran 'The Vegetarian Cafe' in London's Earls Court ten years before Cranks claimed to be the pioneers in vegetarian catering. 

In the dream meal she had seared a large slab of steak for me. I was puzzled because she told me I must eat it to stay alive. I tucked into the meat, but cannot tell you how it tasted because I woke feeling guilty. I was strangely moved because, not only had her dream-self tolerated the death of this poor cow, she had cooked it for me.

This dream was a double surprise, not just because the cook had abandoned her long-held beliefs, but also because, although not vegetarian, I have chosen not to eat cows since being given a bovine heart valve. I don’t eat pork either because pigs are intelligent. I know, lambs are cute and chickens can count!

My heart operation was the second of a trio of health crises over the last six years. First was a subdural haematoma and brain operation. Later, I had open-heart surgery, then a stroke caused by a bacterial infection that necessitated a 7-week hospital stay.

A couple of weeks ago I had a call from the Stroke Association to ask how I was getting on during the Covid-19 crisis. The friendly woman told me, “You do know you are high risk and looking at your records, you’re very high risk.”

I told her that I am lucky because I am in lockdown with my wife and that I have good friends and neighbours, including a total stranger who has been food shopping for us.

Here’s a sobering statistic. To date, a city the size of Salisbury has died from Covid-19. 

 

Ill and old, I know that I am on Dominic Cummings’ ‘to be culled’ list.

So here’s the answer to my friend’s question. This murderous government keeps my blogs going and flowing. So long as my cow forgives me for that dream meal, and my right hand continues to connect to my brain to type, I will fight these state assassins with my blogs.

I leave you on a positive note. Last night I attended a Zoom meeting of the North East Peoples Assembly. Watched by 4,500 people, I know that our numbers are growing.

And if you need help, or want to offer help to others, I recommend contacting your local Mutual Aid group.

Trashing the Country

 

Rowena Mason  in the Guardian writes, “The decision to set out an ambition to reopen schools and some shops in June and some hospitality venues in July – without the epidemic in care homes and hospitals yet under control – also shows Boris Johnson has also been swayed by the hawks in his cabinet.’

 

I wouldn't give the man credit for anything more than being swayed by a personality shaped by membership of  the Bullingdon Club in Oxford forty years ago. 

 

Harriet Sherwood interviewed a woman in The Guardian who recruited members to the Bullingdon Club at Oxford in the 1980s when Boris Johnson was a member. 

 

The woman said: “The whole culture was to get extremely drunk and exert vandalism. Every time someone was elected, they had to have their room smashed to pieces. People talk about the Bullingdon Club ‘trashing’ places, but it was serious criminal damage.”  

 

One former member told The Daily Beast how they sprayed the walls of the room of the person they were initiating into membership with champagne, tearing photographs, and cutting up mattresses. 

 

An 'initiate' classmate of Johnson told how he endured the ritual. At the end of it, he shook Johnson’s hand, was congratulated and told, "you have been chosen.” 

 

“We always hired whores,” he added, “but there is not really much point in hiring a prostitute if you consume two bottles of champagne.”

Today as Prime Minister, Johnson is exerting vandalism on a far greater scale and trashing the whole country. In following the 'hawks' he is no longer spraying walls with champagne, but our lives with death. 

 

How many of you are happy to have been ‘chosen’?

 

www.davidwilson.org.uk

Where the Rainbow Ends

 

“Since Blair, the NHS has been sold off piece by piece. Now, the mendacious Matt Hancock and fellow Tory extremists are accelerating privatisation under cover of a state of fear. It’s a power grab. Wake up. Get angry. Or the NHS is lost.” JOHN PILGER

The windows in my street are full of rainbows and “Thank You NHS” signs. On Thursday evenings the occupants stand outside their homes and give audible expression for their gratitude.

 

That is important, yes, but we must recognise that the NHS has already been cut to pieces and ‘profitted’ off. I've had first-hand evidence of this from my own hospital experiences as I spat out the results of Serco catering: the morning breakfasts of damp, cold toast trucked in from Swansea.

Matt Hancock recently put Serco in charge of the phone lines for Covid-19 contact tracing. At the same time, the company G4s was awarded the contract for testing and providing security at the ‘phantom’ Nightingale hospitals. Meanwhile, Capita are recruiting returning doctors and nurses. Deloitte's, with their expertise of helping government to privatise our national resources, are advising on PPE. Oh—and Amazon are delivering testing kits, the ones that are recorded as having been sent, but never reached their destinations.

There is no record of any of this important health work being carried out by the actual NHS. One more thing—the Royal Mail workers offer to deliver the kits for free was ignored.

The biggest scandal of all are Covid-19 deaths in care homes. Three years ago, in a government simulation of an influenza epidemic, Exercise Cygnus forewarned us as to what a Covid-19 type crisis could do in care homes. Its conclusion was that the UK was woefully unprepared. The report was hushed up with Matt Hancock telling us that, “Everything that was recommended was done.” The Chief Executive of Care England, Martin Green, declared this to be a lie.

Covid-19 has swept through care homes, killing nearly 7,000 up to 1 May. I personally know of a premier North London home which has recorded a death rate of 25%.

This is, I guess, the price we have to pay for ‘herd immunity’ and for keeping the anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn out of power.

Don’t take my word for it. You can read Cat Hobbs in The Guardian, David Pegg, Robert Booth and David Conn also in The Guardian, me in The London Economic and Tracy Keeling in The Canary.

 

"He Will Do The Lancet Proud"

 

Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of the medical journal, The Lancet, was interviewed on 24 April for the Financial Times by Anjana Ahuja. A friend sent me a copy knowing that my father had been a past editor.

He died seven years ago and was delighted when Richard visited him in his care home. After one visit I asked him how it had gone. In answer he smiled and said, “A solid chap. He will do the Lancet proud.”

 

He was right.

I first met Richard Horton on the ‘Peoples Train” to the Stop the War demonstration outside the 2006 Manchester Labour Party conference. A memorable journey. Richard travelling with his wife and daughter and there to address us about war mortalities in Iraq. Tony Benn was with us, joking that we had nationalised the railways for one day. Most memorable of all were Hettie Bower and Bernhard Herzberg.

Hettie was then aged 101 (she died age 108) and Bernhard 97. They sat opposite each other and didn’t exchange a word. I was told later that she, as a German Communist, couldn’t stand the sight of Bernhard, who was a German Trotskyist.

Whatever the orgins of their political loyalties it certainly gave them longevity.

The Lancet had published a report in 2004 from a group of American and Iraqi public-health scientists whose survey had found that about 650,000 Iraqi casualties had taken place after the 2003 occupation . With forthrightness Horton said, “The best hope we can have from our terrible misadventure in Iraq is that a new political and social movement will grow to overturn this politics of humiliation. We are one human family. Let's act like it.”

Fourteen years later Horton told the BBC that the UK government response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a ‘national scandal’ accusing them of adopting a laissez-faire response by floating the idea of ‘herd immunity’. “We’ve had the biggest science policy failure in a generation,” he told the Guardian, adding these words to the FT. “I’m angry because I know how good the NHS can be. Politicians and policymakers and scientists let down the NHS and its staff. And that’s unforgiveable.”

Unafraid to speak out he said, “Some of the great advances, like the 19th century sanitary movement and the birth of the NHS, were not technical accomplishments, but political struggles.”

“Health workers in the present crisis”, he told the FT, “have been bullied and forced to see patients who clealy have or are suspected of having Covid-19 without PPE. When they raise concerns, they are belittled or threatened. It’s horrifying to see the lack of concern by some NHS management.”

Two years ago Horton was diagnosed with advanced melanoma. I had no idea about this. When in contact with me he has enquired about my health problems and said not a word about his own.

I agree with him about his experiences as a NHS patient. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in an institution where people have been so genuinely kind and thoughtful. That’s why I’m so angry that we didn’t act sooner.”

And with this comment, “I wake up and think I’ve got to make the most of every day, because I don’t know how many I will have.”

I hoipe you will join with me and insist on many many more.

Butterflies and tornadoes

 

I have always liked the story about the butterfly in Brazil flapping its wings and setting off a tornado in Texas. It suggests that tiny actions can produce massive changes.

Anne and I live in a one-bedroom flat. As high-risk I stare out at our neighbours and wonder what life is like for people living in multi-storey flats. A few minutes on the internet gives me the answer.

In Tower Hamlets an outbreak of Covid-19 hit Barnardo Gardens which houses 200 people. “No one feels safe,” said one resident on the fifteenth floor and trying to cope in this situation with two young children, “At least ten people on my landing are ill and there’s no one to help. We feel abandoned.”

 

Residents have access to just two lifts which are someimes out of use. One wheelchair-bound asthmatic woman says she feels like she’s in prison. "I just sit and look out the window all day. And that's really annoying me because I want to go out."

Have you ever received a letter from HM Revenue & Customs Tax Inspector, written personally to you and containing these words ...  "You must make payment in full by DATE. If you do not, I will start distraint action against you. This means that I will seize your possessions and later arrange to have them sold at public auction. The proceeds from the sale will be set against the debt and the costs of the action."

Not if your name is Richard Branson, Theresa May’s husband, Phillip May, or at the head of five of the UKs biggest companies who pay not one penny in tax.

Of the top 10 countries allowing billions in tax avoidance, four are British overseas territories. Branson’s island Necker in the British Virgin Isles is, of course, one of them.

When challenged Government claims that tackling tax avoidance is a priority for them, but Tax Justice Network found that the UK has “single-handedly” weakened the global corporate tax system which loses an estimated £395 billion per annum to avoidance.

This is more than three times the NHS budget. There would be funds to put an end to the suffering taking place at Barnardo Gardens.

Alex Cobham, Tax Justice Network CEOI, has said, “A handful of the richest countries have waged a world tax war so corrosive, they’ve broken down the global corporate tax system beyond repair …. The ability of governments across the world to tax multinational corporations in order to pay teachers’ wages, build hospitals and ensure a level playing field for local businesses has been deliberately and ruthlessly undermined.”

John McDonnell, ( remember him?) and speaking under the words, ‘For the Many not the Few’, during what was supposed to have been a General Election, said, “The Tories’ record on tax avoidance is embarrassing and shameful … The only way the UK stands out internationally on tax is in leading a race to the bottom in creating tax loopholes … A Labour government will implement the most comprehensive plan ever seen in the UK to tackle tax avoidance and evasion.”

Memories.

The sun shines, I can hear children’s laughter in the gardens below, and we are grateful to have kind neighbours and a police cadet we have yet to meet, who braves the long supermarket queues to do our weekly shop. He then drops it off here by bicycle. 

 

We have bought two folding chairs so we can sit outside at the front of the house and another stranger stopped by (two meters distance of course) and offered to add our food order to her delivery.

We are lucky, but my sadness and anger continues at the prolonged fate of those residents at Barnardo Gardens.

Some people are saying they hope things will return to normal once the epidemic is over. I hope not. We have to start living in recognition that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all.’ We have to behave like Brazilian butterflies and set off social and political tornados.

Quest for Pandemic Recovery

Thank you Maureen Larkin for alerting me to Matthew Hutson’s article, ‘The Quest for a Pandemic Pill’ published in the New Yorker.

The gist of it is that the system we live (and some die) under is only equipped to save lives when there is profit to be made. Here is a summary, but it’s worth reading it all.

Pharmaceutical companies are not interested in developing drugs for use with acute respiratory infections such as Covid-19. Their investment is in drugs for chronic diseases, such as aids and Hepatitis B.

Twenty years ago, many Big Pharma companies had antiviral-drug programmes. Now there are few.

GlaxoSmithKline was working on broad-spectrum antivirals for respiratory infections like Covid-19, but in 2015 the project was shut down.

Why? The capitalist economy within which the pharmaceutcals flourish demand a return on their investment.

 

Suppose they tried to develop an antiviral for Covid-19; by the time it would be available novel Coronavirus would have gone. Where’s the profit in that?

There will always be people dying of cancer, but pandemics arrive infrequently and don’t necessarily stay for long—characteristics that make drug research and development a commercial liability.

Because pandemics move fluidly across borders there must be global clinical data gathered from multiple countries.

The World Health Organization has attempted this with its International Solidarity Trial, but it's too limited. With Donald Trump withdrawing US support from WHO it is also too risky.

In the absence of international funding, research and development, public health depends on those who have both wealth and intelligence. For example the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard pledged a hundred and twenty-five million dollars for Covid-19 research to help overcome some of the market impediments to drug development.

This is the third coronavirus outbreak in two decades. There is, undoubtedly, a fourth on the horizon.

There is no way to predict what disease it will cause—it won’t be SARS or MERS or Covid-19, but certain things will be the same. Masks will be necessary, the streets will empty, fear will take hold and people will die unnecessarily.

The only health Big Pharma will be looking out for is a healthy return on their investments.