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The following article appeared on the New Statesman’s online blog, The Staggers in July 2014 To save the NHS, Labour must face the ugly truth of PFI debts Labour is right to focus on rescuing the NHS from the harm done by this government, but must face the truth that it was the party that introduced private finance into the health service in the first place. Ed Miliband has said that this is going to be an “NHS summer”. He has sensed, rightly, that there’s something in the air, a tension over the precarious health service. Strain on services is rising, the number of hospitalsRead More →

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There was a copy of the London Evening Standard waiting for me on the table as I slumped down on the train to St Pancras. The headline snapped at me: ‘LONDON: THE £12BN TECH POWERHOUSE’.“London’s booming tech industry ,” it continued, “will pump £12bn into the capital’s economy over the next 10 years, according to a major study”.Full-time Londoners probably don’t notice this storm of activity around them. But as I come and go, yanked back and forth between the capital and Nottingham, sometimes I think I’m in a privileged position to see the woods and the trees.I notice the little details. Like the thunderingRead More →

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Once upon a time, I was invited to watch a man masturbate. It was a show in an artist’s bedroom, where, to the gathered audience, the sound of a drum and the background of a poetry recital, he was going to indulge in a long drawn-out wank, and bring himself to climax. I declined. But I’ve often thought perhaps I should have gone. I’ve tried to picture the scene, and me standing there, and wondered how I would have felt. Whether it might have drawn some conservative, reactionary indignation from me. Or whether it might, in fact, have been fascinating and resonate with meaning. I’llRead More →

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[Widget_Twitter id=”1″]…out of the blue. It doesn’t happen so much these days, but it used to, all the time. In fact there was a time when we hardly went a day without nattering, especially during long summers in our early teenage, watching videos of The Young Ones and Bottom, laughing hysterically for hours and hours and hours on end. Oh yes, that’s why we spoke. Rik Mayall died yesterday. That mad lunatic with the flaring nostrils, peeping-Tom eyes, and the sweaty, sinister, perverted grin. Those demented features are among the reasons we became friends in the first place. The first time I ever went roundRead More →

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I have written various stories for Our NHS, part of Open Democracy, a progressive news site dedicated to preserving democracy and fighting for social justice. These can be viewed here: Labour’s Andy Burnham moves to strike out “Hospital Closure Clause” Benedict Cooper 7 March 2014 Labour confirmed yesterday that it would be staging a last ditch attempt in parliament on Tuesday to strike out the deeply unpopular “Hospital Closure Clause”. Government brushes aside NHS Free Trade Treaty Concerns Benedict Cooper 27 February 2014 MPs raise concerns about the impact the forthcoming trade treaty, TTIP, will have on the NHS – but Minster Without Portfolio KenRead More →

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48 hours in Liverpool: Go ‘ed, get down http://issuu.com/tntmagazinelondon/docs/1581/69?e=2929754/7607375   You won’t walk far (and never alone) in Liverpool without hearing the echoes of Beatlemania.   The story of the four likely lads who conquered the world will be told by locals for years to come. But these days, a new generation is looking forward, not back, and the buzzing artistic, creative scene and quirky nightspots that have sprung up with it are worth the trip alone. Day one:   Morning:   Between two imposing cathedrals on the side of a hill lies one of Liverpool’s classiest streets. Hope Street is a catwalk of Liverpool’sRead More →

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Clause 118 would leave no hospital in England safe Rules are pesky things when you’re trying to get things done. Especially when it comes to health care and you’re making such big changes that they can be “seen from space”. But for Jeremy Hunt et al, they’re more of a bore, not real obstacles. If the rule book tells them they can’t do exactly what they like, it’s very simple: they just rewrite it. It’s a luxury of the rich and powerful when irritations like Lewisham happen. The public claimed a victory, Hunt feigned defeat. But it was only a simpering type of defeat; heRead More →

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In December I had my first article published in the New Statesman, on the EU’s role in NHS Privatisation. The article, which you can read here, has been tweeted over 600 times and received over 2,000 likes and shares on Facebook……… “No doubt the launch of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in June was cause for much celebration in Brussels. The European Parliament is in the process of enabling a historic shift in world economics with countless, far-reaching consequences.A key part of the TTIP is ‘harmonisation’ between EU and US regulation, especially for regulation in the process of being formulated. In Britain, the coalitionRead More →

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WHEN DANNY took out his first payday loan he had no idea what a terrible cycle he had just stepped into. A cycle that would see him make repeated suicide attempts as he got deeper and deeper into debt and found himself eventually struggling with a sickening 30 different loans at once. Danny is no stranger to suffering. Growing up family life was so dangerous that at the age of 12 he was taken into care, and placed in the tough new environment of a boy’s care home. “I had nobody there to support me,” he tells me. “I didn’t have much family support. ItRead More →

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Geographical snobbery is a two-way street, and for this nowhere man, whose life has meandered back and forth from London, it’s bullshit in both directions This piece appeared in Nottingham cultural magazine Left Lion in March 2014 It seems someone has to be the bad guy, so I guess I’ll be. I’m a bit of a nowhere man anyway, so I’ve not got that much to lose. I’m in a tumultuous three-way relationship, which got really complicated when I moved from Nottingham to London to follow my dream of being a journalist. No sooner had I exited the M1, than I found myself fielding someRead More →