This article was posted on the Huffington Post in the week of Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election as Labour leader Let’s drop the myth that Corbyn is the Messiah, then maybe we can make some progress I take precisely zero pleasure in this. I’m actually quite depressed. If it weren’t for the private messages I receive on social media, or the frank conversations over a beer or two, with Corbynistas doubting their own Corbynianity (while still publicly whooping his name), I might not have the confidence to say all this. I’ve been to two Corbyn rallies now, with almost exactly a year in between, and the same thing has happened on both…
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The Corbynite legions have become the Tories’ most valuable allies
This comment piece originally appeared on The Huffington Post UK Politics section in July 2016 The Corbynite legions have become the Tories’ most valuable allies In a less surreal political era the sudden forced resignation of the Conservative Prime Minister would be a moment of panic for the Tories, and a golden opportunity that Labour would have jumped on. But nothing is quite as it should be now we’re through the political looking-glass. On one bizarre Friday morning alone we witnessed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. A little over a week later the UK is poised to leave the European Union; the faction of the Conservative Party…
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Humanity took a backward step on Thursday
Humanity took a backward step on Thursday One day, in December 1995, astronomers pointed the Hubble telescope at a black spot in the sky. It made no sense – this was a black spot in the sky the size of a tennis ball viewed from 100 metres away, containing no visible stars, dots, blobs or, well, anything. After 10 days of exposure, they took a look at the picture that emerged. A picture that’s now considered the most important image ever taken. They gazed in universal wonder at 3,000 swirling galaxies crammed into a space one 24-millionth the size of the sky, each containing, if our own galaxy the Milky…
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How can retailers generate revenue from Snapchat?
This article originally appeared in Retail Week magazine Anaylsis: How can retailers generate revenue from Snapchat and other social media? Snapchat has millions of users worldwide and the business recently announced that ecommerce functions might be just around the corner. Hours before the catwalk launch of its Spring/Summer 2016 collection, as last-minute finishing touches were still being made, Burberry gave its fans a peek behind the curtain. In what chief executive Christopher Bailey described as a “unique, real-time view of the creation of our show”, the retailer posted dozens of photos from behind the scenes, live to its millions of followers on Snapchat. A month later came another first – a…
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In pictures: Paris
[Show slideshow]
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Vaccine “free for all” market
This article first appeared on the newstatesman.com in March 2016 Take a look at the World Health Assembly’s action plan on tackling the barriers to global vaccination, and time and time again, the almighty dollar comes up. The resolution, passed by all 193 countries present at the Assembly last summer, raises deep concerns about the “increased financial burden of new vaccines”; that “many low- and middle-income countries may not have the opportunity to access newer and improved vaccines, particularly because of the costs related to the procurement and introduction of these vaccines”; and that “globally immunization coverage has increased only marginally since the late 2000s”. Behind the resolution, on the…
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Photography: head in the clouds
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Whistleblowing doctors
How the government is leaving whistleblowing doctors to twist in the wind By Benedict Cooper To the untrained mind the sheer incomprehensibility of legal talk can make courtroom proceedings seem like a thick layer of cloud: featureless and unremarkable. But every now and then, a thunderbolt darts down and catches you by surprise. Sitting in Courtroom One of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) two weeks ago, on the second floor of Fleetbank House, Salisbury Square – in the heart of the legal establishment – I had one of those moments. I was there to report on the latest stage in the legal odyssey of whistleblowing junior doctor Dr Chris Day,…
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Photography: London Zone 1
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Junior doctors are warning us
This article first appeared in the New Statesman on January 15 2016 Junior doctors aren’t just going on strike. They’re trying to warn us There’s a bigger story than just pay and conditions, warns Benedict Cooper. By Benedict Cooper On a bitterly cold afternoon in Nottingham’s Old Market Square, a group of junior doctors stood shivering together, banners in hand, pleading with the people hurrying by in thick winter coats and scarves to listen to their reasons for why they and colleagues throughout England are on strike. A few stopped, tapping their feet in the chill air; some even signed their petition. On the surface it’s about pay. But there’s…
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The refugee crisis/medical angle
With winter fast approaching the refugee crisis could become a medical disaster This article first appeared on OpenDemocracy As temperatures drop in eastern Europe, western attitudes to refugees cool. The Paris attacks have hardened many hearts, yet still the migrants arrive, at medical camps and aid agencies. When ISIS arrived in Mosul, Fatima knew that her son, a policeman, was in mortal danger. With his children they fled to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, a safer place for now but with little future to offer a displaced family. So Fatima set off on her own, on a tortuous journey in search of a better life for the family. She…
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The attack on Kunduz Trauma Centre
This article was first published on OpenDemocracy in November OUT OF THE DARKNESS of the Afghan night, in the skies over the Kunduz Trauma Centre, the faint drone of propellers could be heard. Then, the bombing began. The intensive care unit (ICU), where the most critically ill adults and children silently lay, kept alive only by ventilators, was first to be hit. For the next hour the American AC-130 gunship circled its target, unleashing “concentrated volleys” of rockets on the medical centre. As staff escaped the building and fled, they were cut down by machine gun fire from above. What they saw in that terrible hour on October 3, and…
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Debunking the government’s NHS conference spin
It was David Cameron’s birthday last week. The big day was actually Friday, but the gifts began pouring in much sooner. An hour of conference-talk was enough to convince seemingly most of the political commentariat that the Conservatives are now the true guardians of left wing politics. Including the Blairite right, that is pursuing vengeance on the new leadership with such venom that it happily cheers Tory spin over anything Labour now says or does. Exactly how a party which is working away at, say, the Trade Union Bill – a legislative two fingers up to everything the Left stands for – can possibly be described as left-wing, I don’t…
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The law students who took on the DWP
First published in the New Statesman, September 30th 2015 Law students had to help a man in debilitating pain fight being declared “fit to work” Disabled claimants are increasingly vulnerable, with justice more difficult to access, and the need to be reassessed after being declared “fit to work”, By Benedict Cooper The first Paul Crane knew of having his benefits cut off was when his landlord called up to ask where the rent was. It was the start of a harrowing time. After ten years of receiving support for debilitating pains – caused when gamma knife radiosurgery to repair a haemorrhage on his brain stem caused radiation damage to surrounding tissue – he had suddenly been declared “fit…
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Hunt thinks junior doctors lack “professionalism…
…and a sense of vocation”? Is he kidding? If Jeremy Hunt isn’t trying to rile the medical profession, he’s got a funny way of going about it. With tensions high and strike action on the cards, saying that contract reforms, the very source of the strain, will bring back “professionalism and a sense of vocation” to a career that attracts some of the most talented and dedicated people around is either a whole new level of crass or it’s designed to inflame. And inflame it has: on Saturday the BMA’s Junior Doctor Committee voted to ballot its members over strike action (or some other form of protest), which could happen…
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Addenbrooke’s hospital is just the canary in the coal mine as far as the NHS is concerned
First published in the New Statesman A toxic cocktail of under-pressure local authorities and low staffing has the NHS on the brink. By Benedict Cooper Among the grim litany of charges laid out in the Francis Report into the Mid Staffordshire scandal, time and again short staffing came up. “It should have been clear,” the report said, “from the history and the nature of the deficiencies being reported, particularly in relation to staffing, that a dangerous situation had been allowed by the Trust leadership to develop and that urgent action and intervention were required”. It went on: “The complaints heard at both the first inquiry and this one testified not…
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Why didn’t Cameron give Dan Hodges a peerage?
“It’s not the professional Labourphobia and ceaseless smearing of the Left that bothers me. It’s the total unwillingness to hold the Conservatives to account”. Andrew Lansley got one, and his Health and Social Care Act has been one of the most catastrophic pieces of legislation in modern politics. It’s been condemned by the medical profession, activists, campaigners, even Conservative MPs, and given the Tories multiple headaches. If it wasn’t for such an indifferent electorate, it might have been much worse. So surely Dan Hodges, who has done more to distract the public from such sins and help the Tories back into power than almost anyone, should have been kicked something?…
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The Spokesman
An article I co-wrote with Zenn Athar for the Nottingham We Deserve campaigning newsletter was reproduced in The Spokesman, the publication founded by Bertrand Russell. The article is below. The city has been on the front line of some of the most radical and, many argue, damaging reforms to the NHS since its creation. The Nottingham We Deserve investigates. by Benedict Cooper and Zenn Athar When five of the UK’s leading dermatologists quit the QMC in December, Nottingham was thrust into the middle of a gathering storm of political debate. To many their departure was the latest symbol of a health service breaking down, and a workforce under increasing…
