PRIVATE healthcare errand boy Wes Streeting has hit the streets running. His magic bullet for getting overweight people back to work is to shoot them with Zepbound, an Eli Lilly weight loss drug costing $1000 per month.
Eli Lilly will invest £279 million in a five-year clinical trial on 3000 overweight and unemployed people in the low-tax, low-regulation Manchester Special Enterprise Zone (SEZ).
READ MORE: Unemployed to be given weight-loss jags to 'get them back to work'
Streeting presumes obesity is the reason people aren’t working, when the problem is decades of government policies that have deprived large areas of the UK of investment in industrial capacity, transport and skills training, and failure to regulate an industry that pumps out vast quantities of sugar-filled ultra-processed foods, policies English Labour is continuing.
Zepbound’s side effects include nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhoea, acid reflux, pancreatitis, gallbladder disease, possibly thyroid cancer and may trigger depression or suicidal ideation. Users need to stay on the drug forever.
That’s a nice little earner for Big Pharma and puts a huge strain on the shrinking NHS budget. That’s part of the plan. Since 2023, Starmer’s Cabinet has received more than £500,000 from lobbyists, hedge funds and private equity firms with links to the private healthcare industry. Global PR firm Weber Shandwick, which represents Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Roche, provided free staff to Anneliese Dodds, the Minister of State for Development.
READ MORE: Wes Streeting: Lower economic growth due to Brexit a 'fact of life'
Reeves got a free campaign advisor from lobbying firm FGS Global, whose clients include Optum Healthcare Solutions, part of US-based United Health and Ernst and Young, that has charged the NHS £2343 per day for consultants.
Streeting took free hospitality from FGS and £2100 from CJ Strategy, whose director Craig Leviton is a partner of FGS Global. Now he’s making the ex-Blairite health minister Alan Milburn a Non-Executive Director. Milburn, who made £8m from private health consultancy work, championed NHS outsourcing and PFIs costing Scotland nearly £30 billion.
English Labour’s heaping more neoliberal crap onto the failing UK, rather than address the root causes of that failure. How much more of this will Scotland take?
Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh
“THE NHS can’t be expected to always pick up the tab for unhealthy lifestyles.” After successive governments cutting education, welfare, sport and mental health budgets, this statement from Wes Streeting is really pretty appalling.
Sandy Walker
via thenational.scot
BEFORE they talk about getting anyone back to work, they need to create the jobs first instead of providing support and funds to those who are shutting down industries and moving the jobs abroad, such as Ineos at Grangemouth.
Marion Adamson
via thenational.scot
“KEIR Starmer says Labour are the ‘true party of English patriotism’” – The National, April 23 2024.
“Starmer makes clear his government will remain focussed on London and England” – The National, October 10 2024.
What do these statements tell us about our Prime Minister? Is he an English nationalist in command of a United Kingdom government, and what does this mean for us all?
In April I put forward the idea that each of the nations of the United Kingdom could become independent and that Westminster, already the government for England, cannot function as the government of a United Kingdom, because of a very real conflict of interests.
READ MORE: I no longer recognise the Labour Party in Scotland I once voted for
With the full levers of government, each nation would be free to prosper and determine their futures, and their relationship as neighbours could improve substantially, in the way Nordic countries already work in harmony.
Meetings of the representatives of the nations and regions could be about more than a polite conversation about how they can cooperate with a government that cannot truly represent their interests. It could be the start of an honest conversation about the state of the Union and a different future, one which recognises our differences and a better way to cooperate as independent nations once more.
Robert A J Moodie
Kingsbarns, Fife
STARMER is not fit for the job. He has no plan, no direction. Apart from a few elements designed to resonate with vested supporter interests, he’s making it up. And he’s not taking his colleagues with him.
The problem seems to be that in his political immaturity he can’t see he’s trying to do too much too quickly. And in his eagerness to show everyone he’s the boss, he’s screwing up and causing resentment among his colleagues.
READ MORE: Labour MP struggles to defend budget cuts and define austerity
As for the public, we roundly hate loathe and detest the man. I vouch his popularity will never improve, and as people have long memories whatever project Labour thinks it’s on, it will never survive the next election with him and Reeves at the helm. Starmer may need to wind his neck in, but Labour need to wind him in even more. Anyway, as Labour don’t have any interest in Scotland apart from what they can pillage to benefit England, Scotland’s only way out is indy.
Jim Taylor
via thenational.scot
I AM somewhat perplexed at the title of Boris Johnson’s mighty tome, Unleashed. Given his lack of restraint in his political and personal life, perhaps Unsheathed might have been more appropriate.
Angus Ferguson
Glasgow
JOHNSON: Scots “only too happy” to avoid work in lockdowns (Oct 11): a perfect example of the mental mechanism called “projection”!
Derek Ball
Bearsden
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