So, Matthew Swindells (a senior NHS official - joint chair of four NW London NHS Trust) urged his colleagues to put more patient data into Palantir's patient record system, at the same time that he was a paid consultant for Palantir.
Once again, the privatisation of NHS functions is riddled with conflicts of interest; the move to private provision is hardly a 'reasoned' decision but rather is the result of the corrupt purchase of influence.
h/t FT
if you have 'reader view' you can easily breach the paywall, but I understand you may not be doing that on principle.... as far as he is concerned concerns have been raised but his defence is he paused his involvement with Palantir when giving that advice (for a period of months)... so no (direct) conflict of interest, but this is a defence to the letter of any rules not their spirit
@ChrisMayLA6 I have a "reader viewer" icon (eg visible on my Mastodon website) but it doesn't appear on the FT site. No doubt they have patched that loophole so I don't have an ethical dilemma as to whether I breach the paywall or not.
So if Swindells has some sort of 'pay for advice' contract with Palantir then between their calls for advice he is entirely free to shill for them? Or did he explicitly end the contract before shilling and declare that he had a conflict of interest - that had been under contract to them and could resume it at any time?
Its not entirely clear from the article, but I'm going to say the latter seems most likely
Aha, excellent Q.: when the powerful decide?
@ChrisMayLA6 Excellent answer.
BTW, what conflict of interest? ;)
A person caught in a conflict of interest can resolve it and retain membership among the powerful. A person caught in corruption may need to be sacrificed and exiled from the powerful (even temporarily) to preserve the group.
@wood5y @ChrisMayLA6 never, the Establishment looks out for its own. Can you recall a single instance of accountability in the last 70 years or more? Aberfan, the Cambridge 5, Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, Jean-Charles de Menezes, war crimes in Afghanistan or Iraq, Grenfell, tainted blood, Post Office Horizon, the list just goes on, with the guilty as often as not promoted like Lord Robens (Aberfan) or Cressida Dick (Menezes).
That's why the Andrew formerly known as Prince or Mandelson being arrested is so newsworthy, but they have not been prosecuted and condemnded for their crimes.
@wood5y @ChrisMayLA6 compare that with France, where former heads of state like Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarkozy were successfully prosecuted, or Germany where so was Helmut Kohl, who reunified the country. Italy had a revolt led by its judges to nail corrupt politicians.
Just as Americans are unaware of how bad their health "care" system is, Brits are blissfully unaware of the corruption and unaccountability of its elites, starting of course with the royal family setting the tone.
@fazalmajid @ChrisMayLA6 I almost mentioned Profumo.
I believe this is a deeply corrupt, unequal medieval backwater of a country and, more disturbingly, there appears to be little appetite to change things.
For example, an elected 2nd chamber to replace the 'Lords' was first mooted in the 1910s, but the ermine-clad appointees are still there on the red benches.
@wood5y @ChrisMayLA6 including sanctimonious rapists like the Bishop of Lincoln.
That said, it's not surprising, indoctrination begins early, like all the Elizabeth jubilee-themed art assignments in my daughter's primary school. Not that different from another monarchy, North Korea, really.
@fazalmajid @ChrisMayLA6 I recall all the sycophancy over Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor's 25th anniversary in 1975.
It turned me into a lifelong republican.
Turning back to the 'Lords' and the clergy, the only other legislative chamber in the world with reserved seats for the clergy is #Iran.
It's not a good look, Blighty!
I suppose it's arguable in that sense that the Normans established a hierarchical gangster state in 1066, and the Americans established a successor in the US in the 18th century. If corruption is allowed to continue over the course of centuries then it becomes Established tradition by default.
The only time that western democracy has worked for all westerners was during the post-ww2 period when communism presented an existential threat to the established hierarchy.
Indeed & that was because at that time the Left seemed more of a threat and so was accommodated with to some extent, in a similar way that now the Right is (once again in ascendance) the Centerists cleave to the right..... we need to make the Left more of a threat again - which is one aspect of the Greens that may have bigger ramifications than just their electoral performance
Agree completely, although I'm also slightly perturbed by the implications of that conclusion.
Westerners generally want to believe that Western democracy is a basically decent system because for the lifetimes of most living people it has been. The world since the 1980s however has seen the West steadily descend to the same levels of privilege, inequality, exploitation and imperialism that defined the West in previous eras with no guarantee that the trend won't continue
If this is, or even could be the case then there's also no guarantee that a re-popularised left wing can make a substantive difference within the boundaries of the existing system, because any change will be countered by an authoritarian response to kill any dissent before it threatens the re-established status quo....as we've seen recently in the USA.
yes, although the key Q. is how effective crushing dissent can be when the material reality for the population so drifts away from the pronouncements of the Right.... however, much remains in the balance
Yes, good question, although being a Westerner born during the post-war consensus I'm not sure I'd be qualified to guess what extreme measures might be brought into play to quash common dissent.
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