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
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.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Steve Woods
Reg