Today’s Daily Record reported on something I’ve been seeing for months as a pre-registration pharmacist.

If you’ve ever seen Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko, you’ll have seen how capitalism causes many Americans to have substandard or even a total lack of health care. In the Scottish pharmacy I work in, however, I have seen capitalism’s effects on medical care a lot closer to home. From manufacturer, to wholesaler, to pharmacy and finally to patient, there is plenty of opportunity for money to be made. Overall this means greater cost to the NHS and a decreased supply of medication available.

Pricey Pills

Lets start with a little quiz. These are Zyprexa 10mg tablets.

Zyprexa is one of the most common drugs currently prescribed for schizophrenia and the 10mg strength is the most commonly used. In practice, I dispense this drug just about every day. It comes in boxes of 28 tablets, each tablet about the size of a 5p piece. It isn’t a new drug, having been released 16 years ago. So how much does one single box cost? Take a guess before reading on.

…

…ready?

The exact price will vary between wholesalers. But for one box of 28 Zyprexa 10mg tablets, the pharmacy would pay around £81 (almost £3 per tablet). Once the pharmacy has dispensed the medication against a prescription, the cost of the drugs supplied is reimbursed to them by the NHS. This means that every year, NHS Scotland spends £12.1 million on Zyprexa tablets alone, making it the drug with the 9th greatest cost to the NHS in 2009-2010. This drug is by no means the most expensive medicine dispensed by pharmacies, and it leads to the question: why are drugs so expensive?

Looking at the case of Zyprexa, we can eliminate some reasons. Bringing a drug to market is a long and expensive process, but considering how much they receive each year from NHS Scotland alone, consider what they’ll be making from the rest of the world! Its pretty safe to say they’ve made back their expenditure. Its not a rarely used drug, so the price won’t have to be inflated to recoup manufacturing costs. By looking at the story of Zyprexa, we can get some clues into the real reason. For a long time, the most effective treatment for schizophrenia was a drug called clozapine. This meant that in order to gain control of this difficult condition, patients had to suffer some very nasty and potentially lethal side effects. So in the 1990s, when new antipsychotics like Zyprexa were developed, they allowed patients to gain control of their condition without the high level of potentially lethal side effects. The drug companies realised that due to the benefit posed by these drugs, health care systems like the NHS would be willing to pay large amounts of money for them. And so, to this day, as with many other drugs, the NHS pays an inflated price to keep people healthy.

Keeping people healthy isn’t a particular concern of drug manufacturers. Ask any GP about drug reps and they’ll tell you that until recently, they would have done anything to get their drug prescribed, regardless of the actual evidence. Thankfully legislation has now prevented drug companies sending GPs on golfing trips and buying them dinner to prescribe a certain drug, but health care professionals still frequently get sent graphs with no numbers and a handful of pens from drugs companies trying to prove how good their drug is.

Missing Medication

Drug companies don’t sell their products directly to pharmacies; they sell their overpriced wares to pharmaceutical wholesalers. It is around this step that the drugs get lost. You see, they may have patient information leaflets, but they don’t have maps and so they take a wrong turn and end up in Europe. Because of the value of the Euro in relation to the Pound, wholesalers can get a much better price for medicines in Europe than they can in Britain. And so why sell a box of cancer medication in Scotland for £20 when you can get £30 in France? Never mind the fact that people in Scotland will then die of cancer. Which is where we are now. For months now it has been a constant struggle to get many common medicines, drugs for conditions from breast cancer to addiction that used to be freely available. Patients have been waiting for weeks to get tablets they need now, people have to make do with less effective drugs because they can’t get what they really need and pharmacists have been spending hours every week chasing up manufacturers, wholesalers, phoning other pharmacies to borrow stock and fighting quotas on what little supplies are available. These drugs are all being produced in their millions in the UK every day, but they go straight out the country for a little extra cash, leaving us with nothing. We’re in the middle of a massive drugs crisis here in Scotland, and its caused by pure greed.

Pharmacy Profits

Despite providing NHS services, all community (i.e. shop) pharmacies in the UK are run by private companies or individuals and not by the NHS. This means that they are run, you guessed it, for profit. While the individual pharmacists who work in each shop will have the best interests of the patient at heart, they are under tremendous pressure from the company or individual owning the shop to make profit. This may often include being encouraged to take part in illegal practices such as claiming money from the NHS for dispensing prescriptions that they did not actually dispense (eg. if the patient didn’t want one of the items on the prescription) or registering patients for services without their consent. It often means that pharmacists are forced to take on as many services as possible, leaving them little time to properly carry out the services and often making them too rushed to speak to patients about how to take their medication or to effectively check that prescriptions are safe and effective and that dispensed medication is correct. Many pharmacists, if not the majority, are not entitled to any form of break during the day, as this would mean that no prescriptions can be dispensed and thus money would be lost. In an 8 hour day, the average pharmacist, almost always the only pharmacist in the shop, may be expected to check around 300 dispensed prescriptions (one every 90 seconds!), on top of any other services and speaking to patients. Its pretty easy to see how making pharmacists and pharmacy staff so rushed compromises patient care.

One of the activities that keeps pharmacists rushed off their feet is a little trick learned from wholesalers. It seems crazy, but while so many patients struggle to get their medication, it could well be in the pharmacy all along. Of course those medicines aren’t intended for NHS patients. Pharmacy owners have pharmacists doing everything they can to order them, phoning wholesalers, phoning manufacturers, ordering one box each day so as not to arouse suspicion, telling supplies they really need it for a prescription. Except this time its not for a prescription. Because much of the medicines that wholesalers don’t sell to Europe are bought by pharmacies. And sold to Europe. No drugs for patients, but lots for profit.

Yet after all of this, some drugs finally make their way through to actually get dispensed by a pharmacy against a prescription. When pharmacies dispense a drug, the NHS pays them the cost of the drug back, plus a small dispensing fee. This fee isn’t very much, so pharmacies have sorted out a way with wholesalers to make some profit on the cost of the drug. In exchange for ordering from them, wholesalers will charge pharmacies a massively inflated price for the drug. Doesn’t seem like a very good deal does it? But the pharmacy then has a really highly priced invoice that they can use to claim back the drug cost from the NHS, while the wholesaler refunds the pharmacy a lot of the cost at the end of the month. This means that while a pharmacy might only end up paying 50p for a drug, the NHS will pay them £10 for it. Multiply this by however many times it happens in a day, multiply by all the pharmacies in Scotland and you’ll see just how much money the NHS loses every year.

Cut Capitalism

Of course, I’m really not having a go at the profession of pharmacy here. I know that the vast majority of pharmacists have patients as their main concern and that they hate having to fleece the NHS and patients our of medicines and money. Its the business types pulling the strings who force our profession down the road of profit, not patients. Pharmacists are health care professionals, they have 5 years of University education and training before they can practice, they are experts in medicines, yet if they want a job they must put patients in harm’s way to make someone else money. And with all this going on, our government’s best idea to save money is to further cut services and further damage patient care. When we think of easily preventable deaths, we think of malaria, tropical diseases in the third world, HIV etc. Maybe we should be looking a bit closer to home.

Are you old enough to remember when it was hippies........................hippies everywhere?

Remember those cops dressed as clowns who were kicking about a few years ago? Well it turns out apparently that one of them was….a cop! More details emerge every day in relation to “Lynn Watson,” an undercover cop who infiltrated the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. It comes hot on the heels of the tale of Mark “Stone” Kennedy, another state plant paid to spy on activists.

Let’s be clear. SSY has no gripe with people who want to dress stupidly and/or take direct action against capitalism - particularly given our own penchant for such things. The Clowns occasionally managed to use their incredible irksome behaviour to outsmart the cops and should be admired for that. We did however know that there would be coppers in their midst. No doubt they did too – given that many of them are seasoned activists. There have been a multitude of stories in the press but nothing we don’t all know anyway. But its worth fleshing out some of what has been revealed for the hell of it.

Most of it centres around the actions of Mark “Stone” Kennedy. Mark spent 7 years undercover, spying on environmental, anarchist and left-wing activists. He recorded their meetings using a modified watch containing a micro-chip which were then downloaded onto Inspector Gadgies PCs. Based on information obtained by Kennedy, 114 people were arrested and many put on trial, having done nothing other than talk about occupying the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. 20 were convicted of various nonsensical charges while the trial of 6 others descended into farce. The trial collapsed because the police withheld tapes that would have cleared the activists and the role of Kennedy was also crucial. It was claimed that Kennedy was prepared to give evidence in favour of the activists thus exposing the state plot to plot against the state. The collapse of the trial has led to no less than 3 totally “independent inquiries” by the Association of Cunto Polis Oligarchs (ACPO), the Independent Piggy Confectionary Convention (IPCC) and Serious & Organised Clown Army (SOCA). No doubt the police will decide that the police are bad and need to be abolished. We won’t hold our breathe.

Kennedy’s revelations in the press since being exposed have including the fact that he was basically paid by taxpayers to have sex with activists – a tactic apparently sanctioned as an acceptable form of “intelligence gathering” by his seniors. This week there was a demonstration in support of women from Reclaim the Streets , a group of London activists, among others who were conned into having sex with cops they thought were friends. The former member of the Special Demonstration Squad stated this week that promiscuity helped them to “blend in” because – you guessed it – we’re all fucking. I’d like to point out before we move on that tricking people into fucking you is not OK and in my insanely monogamous experience crazy lefties are no more or less likely to fuck around than anyone else. Obvious exception aside.

Kennedy confirmed this week that he was far from alone and that there were a network of undercover officers paid for with our dosh to check what we are doing. And more importantly, to first provoke and then fuck up any opposition to the political and economic elite. “Lynn Watson” was an activist outed by Mark Kennedy as a spy. She kicked about the Leeds area spying for a bit. She was involved in the Camp for Climate Action as late as 2008 having previously been involved in Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp not to mention an being an Action Medic and of course, a clown. Various tit-bits from her bank details to a video of her in Clown make-up dicking around are coming out every day. But again, nothing we wouldn’t have guessed. She basically came in, made a mess and left like thousands before her.

Every state monitors and disrupts its enemies. That is in fact the PURPOSE of a state. The Black Panthers were destroyed by the CIA flooding the group with drugs, cops and paranoia. The Democratic Socialist Party in Australia counts among its members a former informant who eventually realised that the people she was spying on made more sense than they people she was spying for (I think it was a woman but my googling fails me). The façade of democracy is destroyed when the state acts to disrupt the forces who fight for a more democratic future. I can only imagine the epic boredom state plants must endure to get sketchy details of the half baked plans made by the left. We must avoid the temptation of spending all day asking where the spy is. In the end crippling paranoia is just as dangerous as the actions of the state. But it confirms that the state does watch us and maybe we should be rather more careful at times rather than blabbering our plans all over facebook or even, quite frankly via phone or email. On a positive note it makes you think that maybe, just maybe we are a threat to those we seek to overthrow. We all know they are watching…except them

In a hilarious twist, the UK’s most senior public order police officer, Bob Broadhurst, told Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee in 2009 in relation to the G20 protest in London that:

“The only officers we deploy for intelligence purposes at public order are forward intelligence team officers who are wearing full police uniforms with a yellow jacket with blue shoulders. There were no plain-clothes officers deployed at all.”

This week he scurried back to apologise to MPs for misleading them insisting he…didn’t know. I knew there were undercover cops in London at the G20 and I was sitting behind my desk in Glasgow refreshing the BBC News page at work. The claim that the polis didn’t know where the bacon was is laughable.

In short, the entire saga brings new (although hardly shocking) light on the amount of money and time being spent monitoring what we do. Don’t be paranoid – Don’t be disheartened. I distinctly remember my last encounter with the Clown Army, at Gleneagles at the G8 when they shouting “booo…miserable socialists” at us as they passed by. An older man behind me mumbled “we’re only miserable coz we’re surrounded by cops.” Just remember there are infinitely more clowns in the cops than cops in the Clowns.

As we already reported, yesterday SSY was instrumental in setting up a totally successful day long piece of direct action against the cuts.

Across the entire UK yesterday groups of people came together to shut down Vodafone stores. For an idea of what was going on elsewhere, check the site that set the whole ball rolling. This was in protest at the fact that Dave Hartnett, the government’s permanent secretary for tax, decided that in this country there is one law for massive mobile companies and another for the rest of us.

Glasgow was the first city in the UK to mobilise on Saturday, with over 30 of us assembling on Buchanan Street at 8.30 (a good 2 1/2 hours before most other cities!) We had every intention of actually occupying the shop itself, but when at 9 we walked over to the door we discovered staff and security guards had gone through the back (having an occasional peep through a strange wee porthole), and locked up the doors. Our protest had won before it even began – we had shut the shop down, and they didn’t open all day.

Those that were there first thing included ourselves, independent activists, other socialist groups and anarchists. It was a really exciting display of left unity in action against the cuts. However, it’s not blowing our own trumpet or trying to hijack what happened too much to say SSY was central to it, and we should be proud that we made Glasgow be part of the day of action. Back on Wednesday this site blogged straight away about the first occupation down in London. In that we asked if it would be possible to make something similar happen in Glasgow.

The next day, TheWorstWitch and I called an assembly point, with the news going out to radical networks of all kinds in our city. On Friday, Liam T designed leaflets and A3 posters for us to hold, and then he, WaveJumper and I stayed up until 3am making a banner. A couple of hours later we then got up and marched on Vodafone. We were careful however to try and keep all the material non-specific, focusing on the issue rather than promoting SSY, meaning everyone at the protest felt comfortable about using it.

Vodafone may have been trying to make a clever calculation that if we met at 8.30 our stamina wouldn’t last that long, eventually we would go away and they would be able to open for at least some of Saturday. They were wrong. We had a continuous presence on Buchanan for around 9 hours, leaving about 5ish, with most of us ready to drop from the effort of standing on a cold street so long, and with voices hoarse from a day long session of chanting and singing.

Off the top of the head creativity was at a high as well, with some absolutely classic chants come up with on the day:

“There’ll be no selling phones here today (tune of ‘She’ll be coming round the mountains’)

Why’s that? Cos they owe 6 billion in back taxes!”

“How do you steal 6 billion? Get Tory mates!”

“Nurses and teachers face the axe/cos Vodafone won’t pay their tax.”

“We closed it we, we shut it down/chase tax dodgers out of town.”

Special mention for the anti-cuts Undead

“We’re all in this together/We’re all in this together/Unless you’re rich/Unless you’re rich.”

Although our numbers varied throughout the day as some had to go, and others dropped by to do a wee shift, we kept a pretty constant number picketing outside the store, leafletting and talking to those going by. In some ways it was better we were on the outside because the shop had mad giant advertising blinds that would have obscured us from public view, whereas on the street we could see just how many hundreds of people stopped during the day to watch what we were doing, hear our songs, take our pictures, and shake our hands and congratulate us. Our protest was met with near universal support, and Vodafone’s behaviour with total disgust by everyone we told about it. We even attracted a bit of media interest, such as the BBC and the Herald (even if most of both the short pieces were given over to Vodafone and HMRC’s bullshit responses to the protest!)

Vodafone and Revenue and Customs have of course seen this as a PR disaster, which they are desperately trying to counter. Against the power of social networking and websites like ukuncut and SSY, which have been spreading the message about their behaviour, they have dedicated their efforts to trying to get the mainstream media to repeat the message that the £6 billion figure was an “urban myth”.

Of course, the people who have been caught out cheating all the people of the UK would say that – don’t fall for their self serving lies. What they’re saying is that they don’t know where the £6 billion figure came from and it was never part of discussions between them. But the reason for that is that Revenue and Customs were never interested in seriously pursuing Vodafone for what they owed. Once Vodafone were caught out breaking the law, Dave Hartnett, the permanent secretary for tax, decided to bypass his own experts and procedures to produce an absolutely arbitrary amount that Vodafone would have to pay. Our figures however, are based at looking at the facts.

The facts are that Vodafone dodged UK tax law by setting up a Luxembourg subsidiary which it used to dump money in a country where it would only be taxed at 1%. The accounts of this company show it as having revenue of up to £15.5 billion up to March 2009 – so it’s based on these figures the unpaid bill has been calculated, something the “experts” at HMRC should have done long ago.

This woman was so impressed by our protest she came and join us specifically to get her picture took

The real myth is the one that Vodafone have obeyed the law and that the government have enforced it. As what people time and again repeated to on the streets yesterday, this shows that there’s one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. The idea that the government has “no choice” but to make cuts is a total lie. The government is doing what the Tories have dreamed of doing for decades, and now see the chance. They have made a choice, and that is to penalise the poor while letting Vodafone keep £6 billion of what should be all of our money.

What we achieved yesterday, with just two days notice was amazing. Obviously we don’t want to be doing stuff against Vodafone forever, but it was agreed participants yesterday that we’d like to build up to doing something bigger next weekend. With a week’s lead in time, we could conceivably shut down Vodafone across Glasgow City Centre. We don’t know exactly what we’ll do or how it will work yet, but we agreed to meet at 10am at St Enoch’s underground next Sat (Nov 6th) to take some action. Be there!

Bonus: Check out the original Private Eye investigation that uncovered all this.

Double bonus: Check out the Venture Capitalist website that Lovebug posted in the comments previously, a sign like action like this can get the corporate bosses spooked.

Dear Vodafone,

Re- Unpaid overdue taxes totalling £6 billion.

THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. ACTION WILL COMMENCE WITHOUT FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE.

Despite being given ample opportunity to pay what you owe to the people of the UK, you have still made no attempt to repay the outstanding balance of tax which you hid in a Luxembourg based subsidiary.

Unless full payment is received by close of business today, Friday 29/10/10, then further action will have to be taken.

This may include direct action against your outlets, negative publicity and a total loss of standing in the eyes of the public.

Our Glasgow Department is prepared for action, and will be meeting at Saturday 30th October, 8.30 am, OUTSIDE BORDERS (NOW ALL SAINTS) ON BUCHANAN STREET in order to pursue this matter further.

Yours sincerely,

The peoples debt collectors,

pp. welfare claimants, children at school, public transport passengers, the homeless, older people, students and everyone else getting fucked over by the same government that lets you away with not paying your taxes.

Protesters today shut down Vodafone’s flagship shop in London, after it emerged that the government was going to let them dodge £6 billion in tax, just as it is taking £7 billion away from the poorest in the UK through benefit cuts.

Vodafone set up a subsidiary company in Luxembourg to try and avoid paying taxes on its profits at UK rates -- its front was paying only 1%. This is against the laws relating to tax avoidance. But HM Revenue and Customs have decided to let them away with paying just £1.2 million to get off the hook, when its profits over the period affected by this tax dodge have been billions. Independent assesment reckons that it’s up to £6 billion lost to the people of the UK.

No surprises then that it was discovered that the head of tax at Vodafone is John Connors, who until 2007 was a top man at the HMRC and is mates with all the people responsible for negotiating to let his company off the hook. Yet again, the government is exposed as working hand in glove with their personal friends in big business, in a collective shafting of the rest of us.

In a future with no Skynet, John Connor(s) is reduced to helping Vodafone doge tax

Except this time, some people decided they weren’t just going to sit back and let it happen. Mobilising over the weekend through the UKuncut twitter, lots of different people got together and moved in this morning to blockade and occupy the Oxford Street store before it could serve a single customer. Vodafone were forced to shut the shop, and it remained closed all day while protesters were outside.

Now they’re calling for people to join them this Saturday by shutting down Vodafone shops across the UK. Whaddya think? Vodafone have kindly provided a facility for you to find your nearest potential protest site. Can Scotland join a wave of occupations against them this weekend? Like their slogan says, Make the Most of Now.

Billionaire vandal and all round dick Donald Trump has controversially been awarded an honorary degree by Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.

Trump wants to kick people out of their homes (with a little help from his minions in the local council) in the Menie estate in Aberdeenshire, destroying the important local dunes ecosystem in the process. This is all in order to build a multi million pound playground for fellow rich bastards -- a golf course, luxury hotel and various other things completely useless, unlike the home for people and wildlife it is currently.

Not surprisingly this has pissed a lot of people off. So the news that an Aberdeen based uni has decided to honour him has folk up in arms.

RGU have said the degree is for his exceptional wrecking people’s lives for his own amusement skills “business acumen” and “the future his company is planning for the North East of Scotland” -- a future of ordinary people kicked and a beautiful place reduced to an ecological deadzone for those with more money than sense to hit balls around with sticks.

The Trump Mafia Organisation has been subjecting local people to some pretty serious intimidation. And now he’s not only getting away with his unbelievably behaviour, he’s being given an award for it!

One man who was particularly unhappy was the former principal of RGU, Dr David Kennedy, who was a key figure at the uni from 1987-97. He’s handed back his own honorary degree in protest. He said (not mincing his words):

“It’s an insult to decent people everywhere. Mr Trump is simply not a suitable person to be given an honorary

Former RGU Principal Dr David Kennedy hands back his own degree in disgust

degree and he should not be held up as an example of how to conduct business. Mr Trump’s behaviour in north-east Scotland has been deplorable from the first, particularly in how he has treated his neighbours.

“The university needs to realise how strongly people feel about this issue. I can think of no better way to express my anger at the decision to honour Mr Trump than to return my own honorary doctorate to the university.

“I would not want to hold the award after Mr Trump has received his.”

This Saturday the Tripping Up Trump campaign is organising the March of Menie to protest about the decision, and Trump’s outrageous actions. It’s a great chance to come down and show your support for the people that live there. The march is meeting at the Balmedie visitor centre at 12, and marching to The Bunker, a plot of land bought up Tripping Up Trump. (See their ace wee film below).

In the words of the campaign:

The Fremen warriors are very upset about the threat to the Dunes

“Bring, friends, family, flags and noise for what is going to be an excellent fun way to show Trump that we will stand up to him. At The Bunker there will games, bagpipes and we’ll take a giant photo.

After the March we’re holding an exhibition to showcase the unique and picturesque dunes at the The Whitehorse from 2-5pm. Refreshments and snacks will be available.”

If you’re in Glasgow and fancy a wee day out, Tripping Up Trump have really generously put on a bus up to Aberdeenshire. It’s all paid for, so although they could do with donations towards the cost, if you’re really skint you can still have a nice trip to a lovely place on Saturday, and show your solidarity while you’re at it. Loads of SSY members are going, so it should be a good laugh. The bus is leaving from Glasgow at about 8am (early I know, but Aberdeenshire is a long way away, and it’ll be totally worth it.) Why not come along? Places are limited, so if you’d like a place leave your contact details in the comments and we’ll be in touch!

RGU former principal voices his displeasure

Your riot cops are no match for our RHINO SIEGE ENGINE

I’ve just returned from 5 days of occupying the land of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a piece of direct action that yesterday successfully achieved its objective of shutting down RBS’ headquarters. On Monday when we looked across at the building we could see there was nobody working there apart from cops and security guards.

Context

A quick recap: for the past few days hundreds of activists affiliated with Climate Camp have targetted the Royal Bank of Scotland. Having previously taken direct action against projects like Kingsnorth coal fired power station and the (now cancelled) third runway at Heathrow, they’ve moved on to a target that’s slightly less obvious.

But for people concerned about climate change, RBS is in fact at the heart of the problem. As a financial institution, they are the biggest UK investors in fossil fuels, styling themselves “the oil and gas bank.” In an economy that is now kept firmly in the stranglehold of financial capitalism, banks and other investors must be held responsible for their leadership role in a socio-economic system that is destroying the ecological basis for civilisation.

This system is now in the early stages of falling apart at the seams, due to the interrelated crises of the environment, the economy and social collapse. In the UK, RBS is at the heart of this process.

The current economic crisis was caused by the fact that the dominant financial institutions, like RBS, had used debt and self-delusion to try and keep the economy going. This bubble lasted for a while, until the myths that underpinned it began to unravel. The UK government then gave RBS and other massive banks huge injections of our money. RBS is now 84% owned by the British state. However, they refused to take any control over the banks in return for this money, leaving RBS under the command of its previous owners.

The people that run RBS have one priority: finding ways to invest their money (which you and I gave them) that will generate them more profits and then more money to invest. That’s what they exist to do as an institution. One of the main ways they can do that is to put our money into energy projects. As the world’s supplies of fossil fuels dwindle, the ones that remain will become more profitable to extract, at least for a while.

So RBS has poured our money into projects and companies like the Alberta Tar Sands, ConocoPhilips who are destroying the Amazon rainforest, and E.ON, the energy corporation looking to cover Europe with new coal fired power stations. They do this not because they’re evil, but because they are designed as an institution to do a specific job, and they’re doing that job.

As it is currently structured, it would be impossible to make RBS act otherwise, which is why we should demand that instead of being controlled by private capitalists the wealth of RBS is used collectively and socially to solve problems in the world, instead of being used to create huge problems that will make the world a less habitable place for humanity in the coming decades.

This is all the more appalling when you remember that the working class is about to face one of the greatest austerity blitzkriegs of all time, after the government chose to facilitate RBS and its chums taking the money that should have been spent on public services, jobs and wages for the people who actually keep our society running – public sector workers. In this context, it’s clearly time for radical action against an institution which is poisoning our society.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the Food Standards Agency with having a “public dialogue” about genetically modified foods.

Last week Dr Helen Wallace, who is part of the think tank Gene Watch UK, resigned from the steering group for the project, and Professor Brian Wynne, who was the group’s Vice Chair, resigned yesterday.

Professor Wynne is an expert on public engagement with science, and said the dialogue programme, which was set up by the previous government, was in fact little more than propaganda for the companies responsible for developing GM food. He added that the Food Standards Agency, which is supposed to act as an independent watchdog that protects the public, had a “dogmatically entrenched” position in favour of GM.

Dr Wallace has similar concerns, arguing:

“It has now become clear to me that the process that the FSA has in mind is nothing more than a PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry. In my view, this would be a significant waste of £500,000 of taxpayers’ money. A process that was barely credible has become a farce.

“Taxpayers’ money should not be wasted on a PR exercise for the GM industry.”

Campaign groups have argued that the whole exercise, which is going to be outsourced to another organisation, will in fact just be used to gather information to allow better marketing and political propaganda efforts as part of an effort to make the public accept GM food.

The last government set up the project to explore the public’s views on the possible wider use of the technology. In the late 1990s GM foods were introduced throughout Britain, including in Scotland, with virtually no public consultation. This led to many massive campaigns, of which the SSP played a key part in several. Now, although GM crops are still grown in the UK, many supermarkets promise not to stock them because of the pressure.

GM protester pulls out crops

Socialists have argued for years that the drive to introduce the technology was coming from massive private companies with an interest in making more money from food, and agricultural products like pesticides and fertilisers. Chemical companies like Monsanto have worked hard to genetically alter organisms so that they will be able to cope with poisons intended for pests being sprayed on them. However, there are concerns that once new genes are introduced into the natural environment they have been shown to spread to other organisms and crops, with unforseen consequences for environmental and human health.

But perhaps most worryingly, these new technologies are not being developed by innocent scientists just interested in advancing knowledge. They are being designed and developed by for-profit corporations, whose sole interest is in making more money. So once a company has altered the genes of an organism, it can claim that this living thing is now their work, and patent it. This means that whenever someone uses that crop or animal in farming, they will have to pay the company for the privilege. In fact, many farmers have been forced to pay who weren’t growing genetically modified crops, after company scientists discovered that what was predicted had happened: their genetic modifications had cross pollinated, and you could find altered genes in non GM crops. Instead of seeing this as a concern, companies like Monsanto see it as a way to make more money, by making these unfortunate farmers pay.

The ultimate consequence of this would be the privatisation of our food supply, so that a few huge corporations would be able to control the seeds and technology necessary for the world to feed itself, and we would have to pay them ransom to survive. One of the most terrifying examples of the way these companies think was the attempt to develop “Terminator” seeds (their name!), which would produce crops that would not themselves go on to produce any seeds. If the companies were ever able to get this product widely used, then farmers would be unable to collect seeds from the previous years’ crops for replanting, meaning they would be completely dependent on seeds bought from the company that owned the patent on Terminator crops.

The resignation of these two scientists follows on from the complete discrediting of the previous government’s relationship with science, after it reclassified cannabis as a Class B drug despite the advice of its own scientists not to, and then rushed through a ban on mephedrone with no concern for real scientific evidence. It remains to be seen whether the ConDems will have a better relationship with the scientific community, but given their support for the mephedrone ban we won’t hold our breath. The Food Standards Agency says it will ask the new government before going ahead with the GM food consultation.

Eating this can not be a good idea

The fact of the matter is, the idea that we need GM crops to end world hunger is a myth peddled by people looking to make money for themselves. The world is more than capable of producing enough food to feed the human race through sustainable, ecological and organic agriculture. The problem isn’t the food we produce so much as the way its distributed. When so much of the land on Earth is dedicated to producing crops and meat for the rich countries, it’s hardly surprising those who live elsewhere go hungry.

Bonus: Check out this article, ‘Can Ecological Agriculture Feed Nine Billion People?‘ (If you can’t be arsed reading the whole thing, the answer’s yes.)

A sign put up by people in Louisiana who face the destruction of their environment and livelihoods

As Leftfield previously reported, the US is currently undergoing one of its worst environmental disasters of all time. Last month, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico started an oil spill of gargantuan proportions. For weeks huge quantities of oil have been pouring into a pristine natural environment, devastating the species that live in it as well as the lives of the people living along the Gulf coast. Gulf fishermen are likely to be left without a livelihood.

As the full weight of this catastrophe sinks in, attention is increasingly turning to the role of the Obama administration in supporting BP, the company that operated Deepwater Horizon.

BP is the fourth largest company on Planet Earth. As of 2007 it had $292 billion in revenue. They use some of that money to directly influence the American political process. In 2008, the year of the last Presidential elections, the biggest recipient of BP’s cash was Barack Obama, who got $71,051 for his campaign.

In 2009 BP allocated $16 million for lobbying Congress. They allocated another $3.5 million for the first quarter of 2010.

The year following Obama’s election, the US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service exempted the Deepwater Horizon from a detailed environmental assessment, concluding that the risk of a massive spill was unlikely. This followed intense lobbying by BP to have their rig exempted from the rules of environmental protection laws. In a letter to the White House, BP said the waiver would “avoid unnecessary paperwork and delays.” Those assessments that did take place claimed, in accordance with BP, that a spill like the one currently going on was impossible.

The massive spill seen from space: note the scale

Considering the billions to be gained in profits, BP must have considered the money they put towards getting Barack Obama elected money well spent.

In their application to drill, BP themselves admitted they weren’t going to put in place any further environmental protection measures than the bare minimum required by regulations.

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling.

“The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.

Freed from the possibility of proper inspection, it turns out that BP then went on to drill deeper than they had been licensed to. And a safety valve to turn off the oil in case of an explosion was not installed, because it was considered too expensive.

Since the disaster, Obama has struggled to look tough on the issue, claiming BP were completely responsible and will be made to pay. But this distracts from his own role, and the role of his government, in allowing this disaster to happen.

Since the US government declared Deepwater Horizon safe, 11 workers have gone missing, presumed dead. Oil gushes from the sea bed at the rate of 4000 barrels a day, and already covers an area larger than Puerto Rico. Efforts to cap the spill with a specially manufactured tower have so far failed, and the tower has had to be pulled out. Hundreds of people have already been made unemployed due to the devastation of fisheries, and as time goes on many more will lose their jobs. The damage to unique ecosystem of the Gulf will likely last centuries.

It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.

Its beyond urgent that the global energy economy is taken out of these hands of these corporations. Putting energy in the hands of people, and meeting our needs on a not for profit basis is one of the most crucial issues facing the human race.

Updates: The Centre for Biological Diversity reports that even after the spill had begun, the Minerals Management Service has been offering waivers on detailed inspections, and continues to be nothing more than a rubber stamp for the drilling industry. So far, nothing has changed in the government’s pro-oil stance, which comes at the expense of living things that live near oil fields, including human beings.

In his latest column, Fidel Castro (the retired leader of the Cuban revolution) mentions the spill:

“Such developments as the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico show how little the governments can do against those in control of capital. These are the ones who, both in the United States and in Europe, through the economy of our globalized planet decide the fate of the peoples.”

On February 25th a fatal car accident killed two well known gynecologists in Moscow. The crash was caused when their Citroen was smashed into by an armoured Mercedes that contained Anatoliy Barkov, Vice President of Lukoil, Russia’s largest oil company.

Very quickly the police attempted to cover up the accident in order to protect his reputation. They tried to lay the blame for the smash entirely on the two women, Olga Aleksandrina and Vera Sidelnikova, in the Citroen. But their version of events soon unravelled in the face of the facts.

The liberal opposition in Russia, who are so quick to protest the corruption of the government, were strangely silent on this issue. But a wave of indignation from ordinary people has been expressed on the internet, with big numbers of people supporting a demand to ‘Restore Justice,’ in the face of corporate executives who are above the law.

You can read more about this incident in this excellent article by Russian left-winger Boris Kagarlitsky. Also, below is the track ‘Mercedes S666′, distributed by Russian rapper Noize MC. This track gained massive popularity by talking about the incident. I haven’t been able to find a version with English subtitles in the video. However, the comments on youtube do have a translation-obviously it comes with a disclaimer that I’m in no position to check their accuracy, but I’ve copied them below the video.

“Let me introduce myself,
My name is Anatoly Barkov
I do not have any wings or any vampire eyeteeth.
In my position I do not need these stupid accessories
Let the hard rock musicians to have these silly, satanic things
You know, being a vice president of Lukoil  is not only-only
I have to look solid without any rubbish
I do not look like evil at all
I am a person of a quite different level, a creature of a really high power
do not know problems, which could not be solved by corruption. I do not know of people, which lives are more important than my interests,
It does not touch me what the media will write about me.
If you are on the way for my Mercedes- does not matter- YOU will always have a blame in case of a traffic accident
Ref: MercedesS666, get out from my way, Plebeian, do not try to stay on it!
Silly Plebeian, shake! Patricians are on the road! Hurry! We are late on a way to a Hell…
In a Hell I will be boiled next to Evsukov (a policeman who shot and killed innocent people in a supermarket in Moscow in April 2009)
But now I am OK and wrapped up with everything
I am insured 100% from any troubles
By the way I am in touch with Vova (V.Putin)
I have an ability to change even TIME and SPACE
Suddenly all the video cameras are off
If they content some proofs of my crime
And just put meaning of people deep in your..
Ordinary people talking and talking, and so they will be quiet after all
Like a little dog yapping at an elephant
But he will always have a good reputation in any case.
I honestly admit that I do not really remember, Who are Vera Sidelnikova and Aleksadrina Olga
R: Mercedes S666, get out from my way, Plebeian, do not try to stay on it!
Silly Plebeian, shake! etc….. We are late on a way to a Hell, Keep away from our carriages!
Mercedes S666, get out from my way, Plebeian, do not try to stay on it!
Silly Plebeian, shake! Patricians are on the road!
Hurry! We are late on a way to a Hell,
Keep away from our carriages!”